LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.^ 

' Shelf -i-.te-... 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



u 



THE YOUNG IDEA' 



OR 



COMMON SCHOOL CULTURE 



BY ^^^^ 

CAROLINE B. LeROW 

COMPILER OF "ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT.' 




"Truth is afraid o'f nothing but concealment." — Plato. 



CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited 
J04— io6 Fourth Avenue, New York 



V^^Vx 



Copyright, 



O. M. DUNHAM. 



A II rights reserved. 



Press W. L. Mershon & Co., 
Rahway, N. J. 



DEDICATED 

TO THE 

FATHERS AND MOTHERS OF AMERICA 

BY ONE WHO 

LOVES THEIR CHILDREN. 



PREFACE. 



The reader will please take it patiently if he find 
what has already been printed again printed here. Print- 
ing ink now is like sympathetic ink, it becomes as quickly 
invisible as visible ; wherefore it is good to repeat old 
thoughts in the newest books. Why should one single 
good observation or rule be lost because it is impris- 
oned in some monstrous folio or blown away in some 
single sheet? — [Preface to " Levana ; or, The Doctrine 
of Education. "—Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. "Something you Find Out," . . . i 

II. " Words, Words, Words," .... 14 

III. "The Sins OF Numbers," .... 27 

IV. "The Verb and its Nomitive," . . 43 
V. "The Circus of the Earth," ... 57 

VI. " Seeing into Things," . . . , 70 

VII, " Intelligence for the World," . , 84 

VIII. Brains without Bodies, .... 95 

IX. Hands and Heads, 107 

X. " Senators Swear," 121 

XI. "No Pesky Palion," 132 

XII. Green Apples and Gooseberries, . . 145 

XIII. "A Double-Scull Race," . . . .168 

XIV. What You Don't Know, .... 191 



"THE YOUNG IDEA" 

OR 

COMMON SCHOOL CULTURE. 



CHAPTER L 
"something you find out." 

The definition of the word ** wicked," occur- 
ring in the reading lesson, is asked in a class of 
children from ten to twelve years of age, of for- 
eign parentage, and living in a tenement-house 
ward. 

*' What does ' wicked ' mean ? Some one tell." 

" A sick person." 

"Oh, no. Wicked means very naughty, very 
bad. Tell me what wicked persons do." 

" Thieves, robbers, murders, niggers, ghosts — " 

" O my dear -children ! There is no such 
thing as a ghost, and negroes are not all wicked." 

" I know a nigger that steals. Our dog steals. 
Rats steals." 

" Is it wicked for a dog or a rat to steal ? " 

" No, ma'am." 

"Why not?" 

" 'Cause they ain't got no manners." 

The public school teacher who gives this ver- 



2 " 2"he Yotmg Idea.** 

batim report of the lesson is unreasonable 
enough to follow it with a complaint that her 
"grade" requires her to teach a few other 
simple, familiar words, indispensable to the im- 
mediate use of the children. Among these are 
"columbine, geranium, gorgeous, chorister, can- 
opy, surplice, reverence, assembled, languidly," 
etc., etc. What suggestive words to these fav- 
ored tenement-house waifs and strays, sur- 
rounded as they are by all the varied beauties of 
nature and of art ? Think of the wide expanse 
over which their eyes are privileged to roam, — 
what stretches of dirty, sagging roofs, piled with 
the choicest rubbish ; crooked and blackened 
chimneys sharply cut against the brilliant blue of 
the hidden heavens ; graceful pulley clothes-lines 
displaying their fluttering treasures ! What un- 
limited visions of ash boxes and barrels, rags 
and garbage ! What can they not tell their de- 
lighted teacher about " columbines and gerani- 
ums, choristers and surplices ! " What visions 
of old cathedrals, flooded with " dim, religious 
light "; of the canopied altar ; of the assembled 
congregation bowing in reverence, — languidly or 
otherwise, — are instantly and vividly brought to 
these young minds by the mere casual mention 
of these euphonious syllables ! 

Some equally unreasonable teachers are prone 
to quote the words of Comenius, who flattered 
himself that he understood something of the 
philosophy of education, — " We must learn 



" The Young I dear 3 

things before words. " But of what use are 
books and dictionaries and teachers, unless the 
books are to hold the words, and the diction- 
aries are to hold the definitions, and the child is 
to hold both words and definitions until the 
time comes for the recitation which delivers 
them over to the teacher? 

Another lesson requires the definition of 
** monopoly." Monopoly ! Simple word enough. 
How terribly familiar we are with it ! How it is 
repeated and explained and discussed by the 
press and the public of this country, blessed 
with commercial " corners," great telegraph com- 
binations, and gigantic railroad corporations. 
Monopoly I Why, every man among us knows 
what that is, and if any child in the fourth grade 
doesn't know, it's high time he did. 

The dictionary is at hand. 
*' Monopoly — from two Greek words meaning 
alone and to sell. Sole permission and power of 
dealing in any goods or with a particular coun- 
try ; exclusive command or possession." 

That night the teacher in her hall bed-room, 
" correcting exercises " by the light of her kero- 
sene lamp, reads with inexpressible satisfaction 
that 

" Our grocery man is a monopoly because he 
keeps on a corner all alone." 

From the next paper she learns that, contrary 
to the notion of some political economists, mo- 
nopoly has an utilitarian element, since 



4 " 21ie Young Idea.*' 

" Monopoly is something to clean the floor 
with." 

The dictionary has enlightened the children 
on the meaning of " Stability, the state of being 
firm or stable." To these narrow-minded young 
people this is, to be sure, a little like walking 
around in a circle, leading one of them to an- 
nounce that 

" Stability is taking care of a stable," while 
another one declares, ^' Stability is stables in 
general." 

There is something tantalizing in this last ex- 
pression, — " in general." Now what had the 
child in his mind when he wrote those non- 
committal words which may mean so much or 
so little? ''Stables — in general." Alas, the 
kerosene lamp sheds no light on the mystery. 

A very common and useful word is " albino." 
In this enlightened age, what sort of education 
is that which neglects to instruct children con- 
cerning the nature and characteristics of an 
albino ? The teacher is faithful to the require- 
ments of the '' grade, " and her midnight labor 
rewards her with the discovery that 

^' An albino has no eyes." 

*' An albeno has red eyes and hair." 

" A mosquito is the child of black and white 
parents." 

One might almost be tempted to believe that 
there is some truth in the assertion of Tenny- 
son, *' Things seen are mightier than things 



" The Young Idea.'' 5 

heard." Can it be that old Comenius was not, 
after all, so very far astray ? 

" Boys in school," says Education, " shine 
chiefly by the knowledge of words, for this is 
the mere work of memory ; but in practical life 
men are useful and successful in proportion to 
their knowledge of things." 

Yet there are some boys in school who do 
not shine very brilliantly even in their knowl- 
edge of words, judging from their interpretation 
of some very easy ones. 

" Repugnant " is a good word, and not too 
common. It has a sort of rude and impressive 
strength about it. It has been duly explained 
and illustrated as the " grade " requires. But 
several days have elapsed since the learning of 
the definition, during which other imposing 
words, — "obelisk, doxology, evangelist, ironical, 
tocsin, epoch, monastery," and similar every-day 
terms with which every intelligent child ought 
to be familiar, — have also been defined and illus- 
trated. Next in 'order, as harvest follows seed- 
sowing, comes the natural and legitimate exami- 
nation as a test of the pupils' ability to ''go up 
higher." Teachers can do much ; they have 
been known to work miracles, but even they can 
not *' gather grapes from thorns or figs from 
thistles " as is proved by the quality of the intel- 
lectual fruit raised for inspection in the edu- 
cational market. 

'' Repugnant, one who repugs." 



6 " The Young Idea." 

** Obelisk, one of the marks of punctuation." 

" Doxology, dropsy in the head." 

"Evangelist, one who speaks from his stom- 
ach." 

"Ironical, something very hard." 

" Tocsin, something to do with getting drunk." 

" Epoch, a ruler or son of a king," and, — 
can it be possible that it is a conscious and 
intentional witticism ?— 

" Monastery, a place for monsters." 

The statement, " A termagant is a kind of 
goose," no one will be foolish enough to chal- 
lenge, especially the victims of the termagant, 
and there is an indisputable truth in the asser- 
tion. 

"A phenix is one who sifts ashes," if we 
accept it as a description of the manner in 
which the creature is supposed to extricate it- 
self from its own dSrts. 

" A sling is something made from an old shoe," 
is evidently an original declaration, and not bor- 
rowed from books, but there is a suspicious 
flavor about " Teutonic, a very strong sort of 
spring medicine." 

Truly, as another pupil explains, 

" A definition is something you find out." 

Sometimes it would seem to be something you 
can't find out. 

" He shall be as a god to me who shall rightly 
divide and define," says Plato ; therefore, as 
gods are desirable in this commonplace world of 



" The Young I dear 7 

ours, let our schools be set to work to manufac- 
ture them as speedily as possible. 

" But is not education the process by which 
the child grows wiser day by day ? Shall he 
study only the words with which he is already 
familiar ?" 

Shall the little toddler, holding to the chair to 
balance himself, be taught to walk by setting 
him to march with a regiment through the main 
avenue of the city ? Shall he be instructed how 
to conduct himself at the table by being required 
to carve the turkey for the entire company ? 

In the Introduction to his admirable " The- 
saurus of English Words," Roget states, '' The in- 
vestigation of the distinctions to be drawn be- 
tween words apparently synonymous I have not 
presumed to enter upon. Its complete exhaus- 
tion would require the devotion of a whole life." 
Oh, well, if that is the case, why is it not perfectly 
reasonable to ask the little ones, the babies in lin- 
guistic science, to write out for us the subtle dis- 
tinctions which they so readily perceive between 
— for instance — prediction, prognostication, au- 
gury, and prophecy? They need not be at all 
disturbed by any shades of meaning in disturb- 
ance, perturbation, rotation, and oscillation ; 
bewildered by mystification, sophistry, equivo- 
cation, or miscalculation, or perplexed by de- 
clension, enervation, dereliction, or renuncia- 
tion. " Words," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
" are solemn things." No doubt they often 



8 " The Young Idear 

prove so to the little children, awed by the sound- 
ing syllables. 

" It's a poor rule that won't work both ways," 
we are often told, so if this one is a good one,-^ 
" The wider the intelligence, the simpler the ex- 
pressions in which its knowledge is embodied," 
the converse must hold true, — '* The narrower 
the intelligence, the more elaborate the expres- 
sions in which its — lack of — knowledge should 
be embodied." 

Prof. Alexander Bain has a word to say on 
synonyms • *' Our only course is to let words be 
known with such significance as the pupil can 
readily imbibe, leaving their more delicate shades 
to be gathered by subsequent experience. Truth, 
verity, veracity, consistency, have a common 
meaning, with differences that prevent their in- 
discriminate application. To point out these 
differences is to give a lesson in the subject and 
not in the expression. Such lessons are not to 
be entered upon at random." 

But it not unfrequently happens that fools in- 
vade without hesitation the territory which angels 
would never presume to enter. " Yea, verily, 
they have their reward " in such spoils as 
*' The little bird sings with great violence." 
" I eat my pie with a little impetuosity." 
*' The ebbulition is when the tide goes way out 
to see." 

And, as if these were not enough, 

" Savage, when a man rides wild horses." 



" The Young Idea." 9 

" Headstrong is to drink too much whiskey." 
" Frantic is something up in the garret." 
'' Language and thought are inseparable," says 
Max Muller. " Words without thoughts are dead 
sounds ; thoughts without words are nothing. 
The word is the thought incarnate," as, for in- 
stance, 

'' A proturberance is an effervescence." 
'^ Ethereal is something relating to the lower 
regions." 

" A sonambulist is a man that talks when you 
dont know where he is." 

We may sometimes find ourselves taken un- 
awares by such information as 
*'' A pully is a sort of chickin." 
" A raffle is a kind of gun." 
*' Ventilation is letting in contaminated air." 
" Mastification is moving the jaws all round." 
" Alkalie is acids mixed up." 
" A rehearsal is what they iiave at a funeral." 
" Gladiators grow in my mas garden." 
*' An incendiary is when you go round preach- 
ing and singing'hims." 

" Expostulation is to have the small-pox," 
and 

*' A turbot is a kind of rhetorical style." But 
"accidents will happen in the best regulated 
families," and, occasionally, things may get a 
little mixed if there are a great many of them, 
and the apartments of the mental habitation are 
neither numerous nor spacious. 



lo « The Young Idea:' 

We learn further, as the result of our reason- 
able expectations, that 

''Lemons are austere because they are sour," 
and also that 

" My mother makes flabjacks of austere milk," 
perhaps the same parent of whom it is written, 

'' My mothers spoons is contemplative, be- 
cause they aint reel silver." 

Says Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, " Let us not 
be very much astonished if the stream of words 
which is given to the youth in order that he may 
thereby guide and bear himself upon the ocean, 
should be dissipated by the winds and waves on 
every side." 

Why can not we content ourselves with the 
kernel of truth contained in the next definition, 
when we consider the Latin cursorius 2 

" The boy was cursory when he ran to catch 
the train." 

There is a homely and original flavor about the 
domestic revelation, 

" My sister sets the table for supper very 
cursory, because she is very quick," and we are 
sorry the pupil has any acquaintance of whom 
he can say 

" That man was very cursury, because he swore 
a great deal." 

But if a " profane swearer " is not a cursory 
man, what is he ? As the boy said of a disputed 
word in his lesson, *' If r-o-x doesn't spell rocks, 
I'd like to know what it does spell" 



'^ The Young I dear ii 

*' I am hungry and must have an edible," de- 
clares another. Granted that he tells the truth 
about his physical condition — and it would be 
idiotic to doubt it at his age of unlimited 
capacity — he should certainly be given some- 
thing edible before he is taught the difference 
between a noun and an adjective. 

"One word may mollify another," he tells us 
with a sweet unconsciousness of how he has 
blundered upon a fact, for one wiser than he 
has told us that " a soft answer turneth away 
wrath." 

" A policeman wears a lawsuit," may not be 
strictly true if one is obliged to adhere as 
strictly to the letter of the law, and it is doubt- 
ful if 

" David charmed Saul with a harpoon." 

Probably quite a contrary effect Avould have 
been produced by the use, no matter how skill- 
ful, of that particular weapon. It does occa- 
sionally seem as if 

" A problem is something you cant ever 
find out." 

How the soul of Lord Byron would have re- 
joiced in the definition 

" A critic is something to put your feet 
on to." 

By an evident association of ideas, two quite 
dissimilar words seem somehow to be *' all in 
the family": 

" Treaty is when your mother gives you 



12 " The Young Idea:' 

money to buy fire-crackers and ice cream forth 
of July." 

" Cerebration is having a good time forth of 
July." 

Bless the little appreciative soul ! 

" Missionary when a man goes to the hethen 
and they eat him all up," is suggestive in that 
little word ''all " of no halfway work, whatever 
may be thought of the moral or physical ten- 
dency of the work itself. But it becomes a 
little difficult to "draw the line" between the 
day school and the Sunday-school instruction, 
when we are told 

" Cannibal is two brothers that killed them- 
selves in the Bible." 

" Our parlor is a bivalve because it has fold- 
ing doors," is an architectural technicality be- 
traying its Latin origin, and for which the book, 
not the occupant of the parlor, should be held 
responsible. 

" Indian rubber is very sarcastic," comes 
within less than an inch of the truth, and if 

" Indian cabooses ride on their mothers 
backs," perhaps it is more the mothers' business 
than it is ours. 

After reading that 

" She was called a patrician because she lived 
in Paris," that 

" A plebiscite is a very small inseck," that 

" A constellation of physicians had been 
summoned," and that 



" The Young Idea:' 13 

"The dog ensued the man to the brook," we 
do not wonder that 

" The boy was sick with information," though 
• if he were asked questions about things which 
are to him real things,would he tell you that a pair 
of skates was something to eat, a bob-sled some- 
thing to wear, or a piece of pie something to play 
with ? But he defines '' mortal " as " everlasting " 
as he has no possible way of discriminating 
between mortality and immortality ; '' maledic- 
tion," which he calls a ''blessing," has no dis- 
tinction in his mind from "benediction," and 
why should it have — save by the accident of 
memory ? If to him '' Remuneration is cutting 
off from church membership," what wonder,when 
he is practically talking in an unknown tongue ? 

" So far as the different counties have been 
heard from," — as say the newspapers the morn- 
ing after election, — no child has yet been 
required to explain color to a blind man, sound 
to a deaf man, or heat to an Esquimau. 

This early and persistent use of words with- 
out ideas is the worm at the root of the 
educational tree, and its blighting effect can be 
traced through every branch of the child's 
mental labor. He is from the first in a state of 
bondage to words ; he learns to depend wholly 
upon words ; he conceives a ludicrous defer- 
ence for words. In the language of Bildad the 
Shuhite, " How long will it be ere ye make an 
end of Words ?" 



14 " The Young Idea.'' 

CHAPTER 11. 

*' words, words, words." 

" Shligiousmore ? " 

"What?" 

" Shligiousmorlls ? " 

''What?'' 

" Shligiousmorlisamples ?" and the mystified 
merchant finally succeeds in guessing that his 
new sixteen-year-old clerk, just graduated from 
a high school, is trying to ask the simple ques- 
tion, " Shall I give you some more of the lists 
of samples ? " 

Reading stands first among the traditional 
trinity of R's, and in most schools an hour 
a day is allowed for it. With five lessons a 
week during the school terms, the child of 
twelve has received over one thousand hours 
of instruction in this one branch alone. Does 
it follow that the average sixteen-year-old boy 
or girl can take up to-day's newspaper and read 
it aloud comfortably for himself and pleasantly 
for other people ? As we listen, both ears and 
ideas become equally confused. Nothing less 
than our eyes can assure us that the " Coronet 
of Pine " at which we wonder is simple " Car- 
bonate of Lime," and that " Fleshy Tin 
Simpletons" are " Pleasures in Little Things." 
We solidify '' Falling Showers Rapidly Shining" 



" The Young Idea.'' 15 

into a " Porcelain Tower, Nankin, China," and 
question whether the " Rolls of Carpet " made 
out of the " Ruins of Carthage," prove the in- 
destructibility of matter. We yearn for some of 
the spirit which moved the little Southern picka- 
ninny who, reporting the fact that some one had 
asked her who she was, declared, " I spoke 
up loud and kinder bright, and said, ' I'se 
Twins ! ' " 

Is it not barely possible that some of this 
mumbling, stumbling, distressing, and distract- 
ing utterance may be caused by some sin of 
omission or of commission in teaching a child to 
read ? Such a suspicion may occasionally force 
itself upon the thoughtful mind. 

A knowledge of vowels and consonants may 
not be essential to man's mortal body or immor- 
tal soul, but the simplest rudiments of a common- 
school education always include this distinction 
between the letters of the alphabet. 

Nothing can be more truthful than the first 
page of a certain text-book : 

" What is a letter ? 

'' A letter is a character used to represent the 
sound of the human voice. 

" What is a vowel ? 

" A vowel is a letter that represents a com- 
plete sound. 

" What is a consonant ? 

" A consonant is a letter which does not rep- 
resent a complete sound. 



1 6 " The Young Idea.'* 

*' What is a syllable ? 

" A syllable is one or more letters combined 
so as to form a distinct sound. It is so much of 
a word as can be uttered with one impulse of 
the voice." Etc., etc., etc. 

Yet after this admirable drill, the child states 
with a touching confidence that 

" The vowels are five, a e i o u and some- 
times w and y, and is a sort of liver com- 
plaint." 

If the first requisite in all speech is ability 
to utter the sounds of which words are com- 
posed, we may as well be introduced as speedily 
as possible to Vowel, Consonant, Diphthong & 
Co. But what meaning is conveyed to the 
average child by the printed statement of a 
"complete sound" or "an impulse of the 
voice "? Not much apparently, judging from 
the assertion that 

" Complete is the kind of a sound a little sheap 
makes," and that 

'• An impulse is what the doctor takes ahold 
of to feel if you are sick." 

Sometimes a little Latin light is turned on to 
these definitions, and chirdren see that " vowel " 
means "vocal," and "consonant" "sounding 
with." The result of this classical illumination 
is the declaration that 

*' A consonant is something you cant here 
unless you mak it make a noise with something 
else." 



" The Young Idear i7 

This definition, while undoubtedly true, fails 
somehow to carry with it a conviction that the 
child has as clear and satisfactory a notion of 
the article as might be desirable. As for a diph- 
thong, though it is called " a very contageous 
disease," there does not appear to be any imme- 
diate danger of the child's taking it. 

Children are occasionally instructed in the 
"breve," "macron," and "diaeresis," becoming 
perfect pen-and-ink artists in the execution of 
"diacritical marks." But that ability does not 
necessarily imply any comprehension of the poly- 
syllabic adjective, or of the management of the 
muscles in making the sounds. 

Is there " any firm reason to be rendered " 
why children should be kept for years calling 
over the names of the letters of which words 
are composed, when all speech and reading con- 
sists simply of the sounds of those letters ? 

Poetry is read and studied for years in the 
schoolroom, yet what realization have the pupils 
of the effect of these same vowels and consonants 
upon the smoothness, melody, and power of the 
verse ? "I cannot over-rate for practical pur- 
poses the importance of a study of phonetics 
which gives insight into the nature of connected 
speech," says Francis B. Gummere in an admi- 
able article on " Poetry in the Schoolroom." 

Prof. Gummere's use of the words "practical 
purposes " is worth considering, for to a large 
class, nothing in the educational line seems of 



1 8 " The Young Idea." 

any consequence unless it can be proved to be 
"practical," believing as they do with Mr. Grad- 
grind that "in this life we want nothing but 
facts, sir; nothing but facts." 

Proper drill in phonetics, or the physiology of 
vowels and consonants, is practical because it 
combines in the highest degree vocal and phy- 
sical exercise, thereby having a permanently 
beneficial effect upon the health of the child. 
Good health has always a definite money value 
in a community. 

In the lines of work recently developed by 
stenography and type-writing, a large number of 
men and women are finding the bread for which 
they must labor as well as pray. 1 he immortal, 
much-studied, and misunderstood \owels and 
consonants form the basis upon which rets the 
science of short-hand waiting ; while distinct 
utterance is the only thing that can render profit- 
able any dictation for type-writing. Peilirps it 
is unreasonable for the graduates of our schools 
and colleges to complain that after the vast 
amount of instruction they have received in 
reading, they must return to a second childhood 
and learn the real meaning of their familiar al- 
phabet before they can learn the first principles 
of phonography. 

" Reading is an art in which all people should 
indulge," states a pupil. 

" Reading makes people very conversational," 
declares another. Under some circumstances 



" The Young I dear 19 

this result might be desirable ; one can, however, 
imagine cases where it could not be so con- 
sidered. But, 

" Reading does you good all over you. It 
makes you stand up straight and take lots of air 
and strengthens the muscles of the mind." 

This may be considered a correct, practical, 
and comprehensive view of a most important 
branch of instruction. 

"In America," says Ernest Legouve, " read- 
ing aloud is considered one of the chief studies 
in the public schools— one of the bases of 
primary education." Yet who could believe it on 
hearing pupils mumble, stumble, halt, and choke 
over some of the simplest sentences of their 
mother tongue ? What chaotic grammar, what 
mutilated rhetoric, what utter lack of sense ! 

"Reading is the first of human blessings," 
says Prof. Bell. " It is the chief of all the arts of 
life. It annihilates for the mind all obstacles of 
time and space. To speak is human, but to 
read is divine. It is the divinity, the intelligence 
in man that reads." 

So we think when we listen to the rendering 
of a "poetical extract." 

' T?! ^ ^o^ver of fragrant roses the musicians now compete. 
Blowing trumpets with their noses they inhale the odors 
sweet. 

" See the Queen how sad and tearful as the King cuts off 
her head. 
One bright tress of hair at parting how she wishes she 
were dead. 



20 " The Yoiuig Idea'' 

We may not be specially interested in Jeshua, 
Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin,Akkab, Shabbethai, with 
their companions the Levites, until we are told 
that " they read in the book in the law of God 
distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to 
understand the reading." Thus does the prophet 
Nehemiah give us incidentally a fine elocution 
lesson. To get the sense should be the first 
object in all reading, and there should be some 
sense worth getting in whatever is read. Read- 
ing aloud requires the skillful use of the entire 
vocal apparatus, — a purely physical exercise, 
the success of which is dependent upon prac- 
tice. 

The Superintendent of Schools in one of our 
largest cities has made wise provision for this 
branch of study, saying with reference to it : 
" The great majority of children will have little 
use for reading as a fine art, but all must de- 
pend for general information in after-life upon 
their ability to gather thought from the printed 
page. Hence the importance of pupils compre- 
hending what they read." Surely this ''ability 
to gather thought from the printed page " must 
form the basis of all school-work. 

*' Choir, a band of sinners," affirms the small 
boy, glancing at his spelling-book. 

The result of an equally hasty glance at his 
grammar reveals that 

" A pronoun is a word used inside of a 
noun." 



The Yoii/io- Ilka 



" In the use of verbs the order of time must 
be deserved." 

Astonishing facts are learned in physiology: 

"The body is projected from the effect of 
sudden shocks." 

" The albumen is about forty thousand parts 
of the blood." 

" In the movement of the heart the two auri- 
cles contact." 

" The action of the larnyx is to deform the 
voice." 

He gathers many facts from history: 

'' The Romans had made no naval conquest 
because they possessed no feet." 

" The soldiers marched down the hill panta- 
loon after pantaloon." 

" Carthage was taken by Cicero who was set on 
fire and continued to rage for seventeen days." 

" The Crusades were millinery expeditions 
undertaken by the Christians." 

" The cotton-gin was invaded by Whitney in 

I794-" 

''At the close of the last war the Federal 
Army nominated and numbered one million 
men." 

*' The Indians were of a weak constitution and 
morality was great among them." 

" When the news of the Stamp Act arrived 
Boston was mufHed and rang a funeral peal." 

How valuable the "thoughts" thus "gath- 
ered "! 



22 " The Young Idea'' 

Here is a gem from a certain First Reader : 

" This is Jane's doll. It is a new doll. Jane 
will make doll a dress. Doll cannot walk or 
hear or talk." 

This is supposed to be a vast improvement 
upon former " Firsts," whose stereotyped lesson 
usually ran in this wise : 

'' I see a cat. The cat is on the mat," etc., 
plunging the helpless little one into an endless 
maze of cats and bats and hats and mats and 
rats and vats. Occasionally this inspiring intel- 
lectual exercise was varied by the introduction 
of a new animal : 

'' I see a pig. The pig is big. The big pig 
can dig," etc., stringing along harmonious and 
familiar monosyllables through all the changes 
of jig and fig and rig and wig, apropos of the 
original pig. No wonder children '^ hate such 
books," and that they scoff at the information 
that "' Doll cannot walk or hear or talk." Many 
of our reading books fill children's mouths with 
intellectual husks which they are expected 
to swallow with avidity, and digest to mental 
profit. 

Such '* reading lessons " remind one of the 
school presided over by Bradley Headstone and 
attended by Charley Hexam, where "Young 
women were expected to profess themselves en- 
thralled by the good child's book, the Adven- 
tures of Little Margery, who resided in the vil- 
lage cottage by the mill ; severely reproved and 



•* The Young Idea'* 23 

morally squashed the miller when she was five 
and he was fifty ; divided her porridge with the 
singing birds ; denied herself a new nankeen 
bonnet on the ground that the turnips did not 
wear nankeen bonnets, neither did the sheep who 
ate them," etc., etc., etc. 

Of all the fine " rules for reading," the one de- 
vised by some well-meaning idiot is the most 
destructive to common sense, — ''Always keep 
the voice up at a comma and drop it at a pe- 
riod." Uncounted hours of hard work are spent 
by faithful teachers— firm in the belief that the 
antiquity of this rule proves its value — in forc- 
ing upon pupils this punctuation paralysis. 
" Oh, the pity of it, lago, the pity of it ! " that 
innocent little children should be made to 
believe that pause and inflection depend not 
upon sense, but upon grammatical construc- 
tion ! 

And Avhat surpassing wisdom is shown in im- 
pressing a child with the idea that the worst 
errors in reading are verbal ones, and in putting 
the entire class, Hke a pack of hounds, on the 
scent of the nervous and breathless reader, ready 
to fall upon him and tear him if by any chance 
he leaves out or puts in a word ! 

Is not the cause of nine-tenths of the sense- 
less, disagreeable reading,- so common in our 
schools, due to the fact that children, from the 
beginning of their school work, conceive the 
notion that reading is simply the utterance of 



24 " The Young I dear 

words, and the glibber the utterance, the better 
the reading ? 

A knowledge of spelling, distinct articulation, 
correct pronunciation, even the definition of 
words, — while these things are no obstacles to 
good reading, they are not Reading, any more 
than boards, nails, bricks, and mortar are houses. 
" The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh 
alive." 

Will Carleton has given us a description of a 
reading class in which, even with distressing dis- 
regard of the letter, the spirit tended to intel- 
lectual life and interest: 

" That row of elocutionists which stood so straight in line, 
And charged at standard literature with amiable design ; 
In Romance and Philosophy we settled many a point, 
And made what poems we assailed to creak at every joint ; 
We took a hand at History, its altars, spires, and flames, 
And uniformly mispronounced the most important names ; 
We did not spare the energy in which our words were clad; 
We gave the meaning of the text with all the light we had; 
And many authors that we love you with me will agree 
Were first time introduced to us in District No. Ihree." 

Jean Jacques Rousseau says very wisely, " Much 
attention is paid to finding out the best methods 
of teaching children to read. The best method, 
the thing no one thinks of, is a desire to learn." 
But this desire does not appear to be fostered to 
any appreciable extent by the process carried 
on in countless school-rooms — as "required by 
the grade " — and thus described by some one 
who knows something about it : *' In four lines 



" The Young Idea''' 25 

we had eighteen new words to be learned. To 
teach these words without drilling upon the 
sentences until reading degenerates into parroty, 
involves so much weary word-calling that the 
patience of the kindest teacher and the attention 
of the most obedient class must wear out long 
before the task is done." This is not exactly 
" to join thinking with reading," which Isaac 
Taylor declares to be '' one of the first maxims 
and one of the easiest operations." 

But how about the result of a *' a desire to 
learn " ? Take the case of the ordinary child in 
the ordinary " well-to-do," middle-class family. 
In school, why is not his geography lesson quite 
as good — and sometimes better — material for 
elocutionary work than the regular reading 
book ? — which in some cases he learns by heart 
and '' reads " without even looking at it. At home 
there are daily papers, books, and magazines. He 
takes part in the conversation, thereby naturally 
and constantly increasing his vocabulary. He 
reads a story because he wants to read it. We 
may be reasonably sure that it is not about a 
horse that can't fly, or a fish that can't sing, or a 
dog that can't play the piano. Possibly it is 
about a boy who ran away to sea. If, in mani- 
festation of our interest, we ask him to read it 
aloud, the probability is that we shall learn " the 
facts in the case," though the vocal expression of 
them may not be all that is desirable in the way of 
ease or accuracy. His interest in the story will 



26 <' The Young Idea'' 

force upon him some knowledge of punctuation 
points, and he comes to a realizing sense of the 
fact that punctuation is really intended for a help 
instead of a hinderance. Having some human 
interest in the matter, he will read it in a human 
tone, as people talk, — and he knows as well as 
we do how they talk, if neither words nor subject 
are beyond his comprehension. 

Still it is safe to say that the proper teaching 
of Reading is the most profitable, as it can be 
made the most pleasant work done in the school- 
room, for it is the key to all knowledge under 
the sun. A taste for reading, a love of books, — 
if our schools could but give these gifts to their 
graduates ! 

Says an English educator, " These are the 
days, unfortunately, in which only such things 
as pay in examination receive attention, and 
reading is not one of them," but sometimes we 
"by indirection find direction out," as has been 
lately proved in New York. The superintendent 
of that city writes : *' We have found out where 
we can reduce the work in many studies by com- 
bination." (Would that the " finding out" had 
come years ago, although it is '* better late than 
never.") " History has been made a reading exer- 
cise. It will be taught by reading and talking, 
and not so much for elocution as to rouse the in- 
tellect and waken the interest." Here, indeed, in 
Dundreary dialect, is the " killing of two stones 
with one bird." May it sing louder and more 



" The Young Idea:' 27 

cheerily than ever after the accomplishment of 
such desirable destruction ! 

And to reach the conclusion of the whole 
matter in the words of Thomas Carlyle : " If we 
think of it, all that the university or final high- 
est school can do for us is still but what the first 
School began doing— teach us to Read," while 
we say a hearty amen to those other words of 
Ernest Legouve, ''In the name of physical and 
mental well-being, I demand that the art of 
reading aloud shall be ranked among the princi- 
pal branches of public education." 



CHAPTER III. 

"the sins of numbers." 

The child who wrote *' Arithmetic is the sins 
of numbers," told more truth than he intended. 
In many schools tjie teaching of arithmetic is car- 
ried not only to an unprofitable, but to an iniqui- 
tous extent, and might well lead one to exclaim 
with sore and sorrowful heart, '' O Education ! 
What crimes are committed in thy name ! " 

" Mathematics is that branch of science which 
the results are accomplished by brain work and 
is letters and figures and signs. These signs 
are Arabs and Romans and were first found in 
Europe." 



28 « The Young Idear 

Letters, Figures, and Signs. Add these to 
Words and the pupil's outfit is complete. 

Just one year ago there was a tremendous 
rattling among the educational dry bones, 
caused by Gen. Francis A. Walker's bold attack 
upon the ''figure fiend," by which name this 
mathematical monster has come to be known. 
As President of the Boston Institute of Technol- 
ogy, he is supposed to know, and to care, some- 
thing about educational matters. His words can 
not be ignored or criticised as the wild, irrespon- 
sible, incendiary utterances of a fanatic deter- 
mined upon educational arson, — and what are 
these words ? 

"It is one of the gravest accusations brought 
against our public schools as at present admin- 
istered, that the old-fashioned readiness and 
correctness of ciphering have been to a large de- 
gree sacrificed by the methods which it is now 
proposed to reform. A false arithmetic has 
grown up and has largely crowded out of place 
that true arithmetic which is nothing but the 
art of numbers." 

This " false arithmetic " is the name which he 
applies to the exercises in logic, or the art of 
reasoning, which, smuggled into mathematical in- 
struction, he considers an abuse. If taught at 
all, he stipulates that they should be taken from 
books, " prepared by eminent teachers of the 
science of mind, and the work should be con- 
ducted by teachers competent to teach the art 



" The Young Idear 29 

of reasoning. This bastard arithmetic fails to 
perform the true function of that study of our 
public schools, while wasting the time of the 
pupils, perplexing their minds, worrying their 
tempers, rasping their nerves," 

General Walker is perfectly fair in his way of 
dealing with this matter. He asks those who 
consider this " an extravagant denunciation " to 
plainly say so. He presents a domestic picture, 
an interior by the artist Education, which he 
believes every Boston father to have seen, and 
which thousands of other fathers in less favored 
localities have been privileged to look upon, — 
" children puzzling and worrying ten, fifteen, or 
twenty minutes over a practical problem," and 
after an evening spent in this way, going to bed 
hot, tired, and perhaps tearful, and altogether 
unfitted for that sound and healthful sleep which 
should close every child's day. "I have myself 
had four children in the grammar schools where 
home study was allowed, and each one of them 
in turn I have seen tormented in this way." 

In a late maga-zine article he says in connec- 
tion with this same matter, " I am myself no bad 
mathematician, but I have not infrequently been 
puzzled, and at times foiled, by the subtle logical 
difficulty running through one of these problems 
given to my own child. The head master of one 
of our Boston High Schools confided to me that 
he had sometimes been unable to unravel one of 
these tangled skeins in trying to help his own 



30 " The Young Idea:' 

daughter through her evening work." This, 
then, must be the acme of development in our 
system, — the child becomes father to the man 
and the pupil surpasses the professor. " The 
wisdom you teach me I will execute, and it shall 
go hard but I vv^ill better the instruction." 

Another statement is made by the same 
authority, which teachers must sorrowfully ad- 
mit to be true. " Pupils familiar with diffi- 
cult theorems, and masters of complicated 
formulae, often vitiate their work by simple nu- 
merical mistakes such as would have been 
impossible had they been properly trained in 
the earlier stages of their mathematical edu- 
cation. If the high schools are blamed for 
this, the masters justify themselves by alleging 
that pupils come to them without being able to 
add or multiply, subtract or divide, or even to 
count with accuracy." As for these "earlier 
stages," the grammar-school teachers admit the 
charge, but plead lack of time for thoroughness 
in the work required of them, — and not only in 
this branch, but in nearly all the others. 

" To this complexion have we come at last," 
High school teachers of Literature, History, 
Trigonometry, Astronomy, groaning together that 
their pupils do not know How to Spell, How to 
Read, How to Cipher ! " There is something 
more than natural in this, if philosophy could 
find it out." 

The Journal of Education is responsible for 



♦* The Young Idea:' 5^ 

this statement : " In forty classes, one-half of 
them pupils above twelve years of age, there were 
several failures in the question, If you buy 
nine three-cent stamps and give a fifty-cent piece 
in payment, how much change will you receive ?" 
And the master of a Boston high school for 
this : " I was informed by the president of a 
Boston bank that, at an examination held with 
reference to an appointment in his institution, 
out of several graduates of various high schools 
of this vicinity, not one was found able to add 
the columns of figures given him, without errors." 
And the comment is made by General Walker, 
*' In a store, a shop, a factory, or on a railroad, 
a lad who cannot set down figures and add 
them rightly is little better than a cripple. 
Now if any greater wrong short of permanent 
injury to health, can be done a child than to 
send him into the world to earn his living, 
without the ability to conduct numerical opera- 
tions accurately and with reasonable facility, it 
would be difficult to see what that injury would 
consist of. Emj^loyers have, literally, no use for 
boys who make mistakes in numbers. Such a 
failing offsets the best training, otherwise, of 
mind and hand." 

It would be well if with old Polonius we could 
" — find out the cause of this effect ; 
Or, rather say, the cause of this defect; 
For this effect, defective, comes by cause." 

General Walker finds abundant explanation in 



32 " The Young Idea:* 

the fact that " nine-tenths of the time given to 
arithmetic is occupied by technical applications 
of numerical principles, or are worse than wasted 
by logical puzzles unsuited to the child's age and 
mental strength." 

Some of the remaining tenth is devoted to the 
expansion of the intellect on the technical terms 
of the science. 

*' Substraction is tlie minuend and the sub- 
stracted end." 

" When there are equal numbers it is called 
multeplication." 

" A partial product is one of the things you 
multiply with." 

" A quotient is a prime facter and is always a 
number or some part of a number." 

*' A composite number is just the same as a 
prime facter." 

" Eagles, dimes, and mills make all a man's 
money, and sometimes he has not got any Mills." 

A member of the Boston School Board, Dr. 
Samuel Eliot, says, " Arithmetic, like any other 
study in the schools, is merely a means, not an 
end. Give it the lion's share and it will play the 
lion's part," and it generally gets the lion's 
^hare. Among the original " three Rs " it 
stood "first and foremost," and like truth, de- 
scribed by Plato, was considered " the begin- 
ning of every good thing in heaven or earth." 
But why ? General Walker quotes those who 
believe that " in sound educational theories. 



" The Young Idear 33 

the exercises given to young pupils ought to be 
difficult, complicated, perplexing, and distressing 
in order that the child's mind and spirit may 
undergo a due preparation for the difficult duties 
and hard problems of life, one enthusiastic 
writer of this school going so far as to declare 
that it is essential to good education that the 
sums set for the pupil should be not only diffi- 
cult, but sometimes actually impossible to him 
in his then stage of development." This, being 
interpreted, must mean, He must swallow what 
he can't even take into his mouth ; he must see 
things invisible to his sight, handle things beyond 
his reach ; in short, he must do what is impossi- 
ble to be done. Well may the poor victim ex- 
claim in the words of Emerson, 

" The Asmodean feat is mine, 
To spin my sand heap into twine." 

But this able champion for the children has 
not trusted entirely to his own judgment in the 
case. He quotes Sir William Hamilton, Eng- 
land's greatest philosopher in this century: 
" That mathematics can, possibly educate to 
any active exercise of the power of observation, 
either as reflected upon ourselves or as directed 
on the affairs of life and the phenomena of 
nature, will not be maintained. That they do 
not cultivate the power of generalization is 
equally apparent. Are mathematics, then, of no 
value as an instrument of mental culture ? To 



34 " The Yoimg Idea:* 

this we answer that their study, if pursued in 
moderation, may be beneficial in the correction 
of a certain vice, and in the formation of its 
corresponding virtue. The vice is the habit of 
mental distraction ; the virtue, the habit of con- 
tinuous attention. This is the single benefit to 
which the study of mathematics can justly pre- 
tend in the cuUivation of the mind." 

G. Stanley Hall, Professor of Pedagogics in 
the Johns Hopkins University, writes : " The 
purer the mathematics for boys of from ten to 
fourteen years of age, the better, it seems to me. 
]\Tany of our arithmetics presuppose algebra and 
geometry. Problems in brokerage, architecture, 
custom-house practices, etc. are taught just as 
in the old Hindoo mathematics a taste for poe- 
try, and in mediaeval arithmetics moral and 
religious maxims and even systems, as well as 
historical information, were inculcated in the 
form of * sums.' " 

Perhaps the arithmetic of the Middle Ages is 
responsible for some of the following state- 
ments : 

*' Brokerage is the allowance for the braker- 
age and leekerage of bottles." 

'' Insurance is when you die or burn up your 
money and the insurance office pays you for it." 

*' Exchange in Europe is when you go through 
London, Paris and places." 

*' When you exchange money all you have to 
do is to get the right change." 



" The Young Idea:* 35 

'' The payment of a note on the back is called 
an enforcement," 

'' Accurate interest is according to the number 
of dates, the days, and the interest." 

Prof. Hall also says, in words more truthful 
than complimentary : " American teachers seem 
to me to have spun the simple and immediate 
relations and properties of number over with 
pedantic difficulties. The four rules, fractions, 
factoring, decimals, proportion, per cent, and 
roots, is not this all that is essential ? The best 
European text-books I know do only this, and 
are in the smaller compass, for they look only at 
facility in pure number-relations, which is hin- 
dered by the irrelevant material publishers and 
bad teachers use as padding." 

George H. Howison, Professor of Philosophy 
in the University of California, declares, " My 
experience and my theories, founded on my 
professional studies and practice, have alike 
made it with me a matter of settled conviction 
that not only in mathematical, but in all ele- 
mentary training," though in elementary mathe- 
matical teaching pre eminently, the first thing is 
to get the pupil perfectly familiar with, and as 
nearly as possible infallibly accurate, in funda- 
mental facts and operations. I believe our cur- 
rent practice in this respect has for some years — 
say the last thirty — been going seriously wrong." 

It must have been during this period that there 
came into being 



36 «' The Young Idea:' 

" The metric system of waits and measures. 
Its just acoming into fashion in the U. States." 

Perhaps other equally perspicacious definitions 
came into fashion when " current practice " 
made a start in this wrong direction. 

'* If there are no units in a number you have 
to fill it up with all zeros." 

" Units of any order are expressed by writing 
in the place of the order." 

"A factor is sometimes a faction," and some- 
times it makes an equal amount of trouble. 

*' If fractions have a common denominator, 
find the difference in the denominator." 

'' Interest on interest is confound interest," 
though a man may sometimes be confounded 
by getting neither principal nor interest. Yet 
the principal is, after all, of very little ac- 
count if 

" Principal is not valuable like interest and 
is never paid." 

" The rule for proportion is to multiply it by 
all the terms." 

Readers of history may think that they under- 
stand the motive of Wat Tyler, who headed a 
rebellion against Parliament five hundred years 
ago. The hero of this insurrection is set forth 
by a pupil as 

' What Tyler was a taxgatherer in the reign 
of Richard Second." And when we learn 
that 

*' A Pole tax is laid on top of your head," we 



" The Young Idea.'' 37 

cannot so much wonder that he found a hundred 
thousand men ready to resent the injury, though 
after all, that is not so bad as a battle-ax applied 
to the same place. 

*' You can find a hypothesis if you have a base 
perpendicular," although that may depend some- 
what upon what kind of a hypothesis you desire 
to find. 

''When you multiply two numbers together 
they had ought to be just equal." But things 
are not always what they ought to be, even in 
the " exact sciences." 

" The parties are bound together in insurance 
by policy," not the only parties who appear to 
be bound together in the same way. 

" The underwriters are the sure parties." 

*' A tax on a man is called a poll tax when he 
has not any property." 

" No man will live long enough to be ensured 
unless he has great expectation of life." 

But Reform never takes an express train to 
travel in, and was never known to hurry to catch 
the one it does take. Very lately a parent ven- 
tured to write to one of the Boston dailies what 
is presumably a statement of facts and an hon- 
est expression of opinion : 

'' Has the reform voted in last year's school 
board, set on foot by General Walker, taken the 
back track ? I fully believe that our children 
are taxed most unreasonably and beyond their 
strength in working over sums which are simply 



^8 '* The Young Idea'' 

puzzles, and which could be of no possible ser- 
vice in business life. I know a boy who worked 
last evening for more than two hours over one 
sum. His other studies, which were vastly more 
important, were neglected. Arithmetic makers 
seem to have exhausted themselves in compiling 
puzzling sums which our boys and girls, in at- 
tempting to solve, are wasting energies which 
might be much better employed." 

Within forty-eight hours appeared an indignant 
reply to the communication, written by a " Bos- 
ton Teacher," and about six times as long as the 
complaint. 

'' There are more than 60,000 children in the 
Boston public schools. Of these probably, not 
a thousand have home lessons in mathematics, 
not two per cent., and of these probably not a 
hundred, or one pupil in six hundred, are worked 
beyond their strength over problems in mathe- 
matics. There may be some, for it is unreason- 
able to suppose that every one of the 1200 teachers 
is strictly judicious, but admitting that one in 
five hundred is overworked, is that a sufficient 
ground for a wholesale condemnation ? 

'' There is too much of this condemnation with- 
out knowledge and without investigation. It is 
laughable to teachers, or would be if it were not 
a serious matter, to read many of the things 
that are said against the schools which fifteen 
minutes' inquiry at the nearest school-house 
would show to be not only baseless, but purely 
nonsensical." 



" The Young Idea.*' 39 

Not even " one child in five hundred " ought 
to be " overworked," nor would be if there were 
not some error somewhere. If only " one pupil in 
six hundred" finds the work beyond his strength 
what a simple matter to ''promote backward" 
the one six-hundredth of a school, and thereby 
not only preserve the welfare of the child, but 
the reputation of the school. To paraphrase 
the well-known words of Carlyle, "'^That one 
child should be overworked who has capacity 
for suffering from its effects, this I call a tragedy, 
were it to happen twenty times a minute — as by 
some calculation it does." 

While many " purely nonsensical things are 
said against the schools," there is some "con- 
demnation " which has the appearance, at least, 
of being the result of " knowledge." Of course 
the parents whose money supports these schools 
and whose children fill them, have really no in- 
terest in their management, and should not be 
allowed to interfere with them. It is sheer pre- 
sumption for a father or mother to venture any 
sort of criticism. But as long as a few of them 
will be so impertinent, disagreeable truths will 
occasionally be uttered in spite of protest. 

But whatever progress mathematical reform is 
making in Boston, there are many other places 
where it is either creeping at a snail's pace or 
standing stock-still. A few days ago a meeting 
of principals was held not three miles from the 
largest city in the Old Bay State, during which 



40 " The Young Idea.'' 

one of the gentlemen made the astounding state- 
ment, " Some teachers of arithmetic deserve capi- 
tal punishment for the incomprehensible prob- 
lems they give their pupils." 

The profession has a large number of Pumble- 
chooks who, it is to be hoped, may be brought 
to see the error of their mathematical ways. 
Poor Pip was a representative sufferer from the 
mathematical mania of this " corn-chandler in 
the nearest town," never content to keep his fig- 
uring to his own affairs. " On my politely bid- 
ding him good morning, he said, pompously, 
' Seven times nine, boy ? ' and before I had 
swallowed a morsel he began a running sum that 
lasted through breakfast. ' Seven ? ' * And 
four?' 'And eight?' 'And six?' 'And two?' 
' And ten ? ' And so on. And after each figure 
was disposed of, it was much as I could do to get 
a bite or a sup before the next one came." 

And the Pumblechook by the name of Murd- 
stone, who was eternally tormenting poor little 
David Copperfield with his " If I go into a cheese- 
monger's shop and buy five thousand double- 
Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, 
present payment — " Perish the whole of them 
with their perennial propositions ! 

How strange it is that so many children are 
poor mathematicians, and that the majority of 
them detest arithmetic even as cordially as they 
do grammar, when we " require them to extract 
the cube root of three-sevenths ; pile one irregu- 



" The Young Idea'' 41 

lar and jagged fraction on top of another, and 
then ask them to divide or multiply this by an 
arithmetical monstrosity as hideous and impossi- 
ble as itself." 

But ignoring the children's choice in the mat- 
ter, "All this sort of thing in the teaching of 
young children is either useless or mischievous. 
It is bad psychology, bad physiology, and bad 
pedagogics. Doubtless this practice would long 
since have been reformed but for the inveterate 
superstition of the New England mind that it 
is well the child should be worried and per- 
plexed in education, and that out of this agita- 
tion of the nerves and this strain upon the 
mental powers, proceed health and vigor. I de- 
nounce that theory in its extreme state as a relic 
of barbarism closely akin to one of the most 
savage superstitions of primitive manhood." 

Knowing the burdens laid by life upon 
all the sons of men, knowing the struggles and 
the trials awaiting each one of them, shall we 
make even their preparation for bearing 
these burdens apd fighting these battles, a 
heavy and a grievous thing ? To torture the 
child now because most likely he will be tor- 
tured in the future ! The educator who would 
advance or apply such a theory should be barred 
out of every school-room and set to building 
fences to keep cattle out of corn. Discipline and 
development, — grand words, grand things, but 
yet capable of misinterpretation and misapplica- 



42 '' The Young Idea'' 

tion. Not until it is found that there is saving 
grace in chalk or slate-pencil, that man's spirit- 
ual destiny can be worked out in perplexing 
problems upon the blackboard, will there be 
any excuse for making arithmetic an instrument 
of torture. 

A most pleasing discovery has just been made 
in New York. Manual training for a long time 
hung about the thresholds of the school-rooms 
of the metropolis. It modestly hinted at its 
desire to be allowed to enter. It grew bolder 
and declared it would come in whether wel- 
come or no ; it grew bolder yet, to the ex- 
tent of pounding upon the doors and even 
threatening the destruction of the building 
unless admitted immediately. '* To maken ver- 
tu of necessite," some trouble was taken to pre- 
vent this threat from being carried into exe- 
cution, by finding room for the persistent ap- 
plicant. This was done by combinations and 
reductions in different studies. Behold the 
happy result, both for the former occupants of 
the building and the new-comer at last installed 
among them. *' We have found out," states the 
Superintendent, ** that the work in arithmetic 
can be reduced ZZV'^ P^^ cent, in the highest 
grades." 

Most fortunate finding out ! Will it not be 
well worth the while of other superintendents 
to explore in the same way their particular 
provinces, to the end that similar combinations, 



" The Young Idear 43 

economies, and advantages may be brought to 
view? Let us considerately refrain from asking 
why such a discovery was not sooner made. 
The question savors too much of the spirit 
which would attack a fallen foe. 



CHAPTER IV. 

"the verb and its nomitive." 

" Grammar is something to talk good and is 
devided into digrams on the blagboard. I cant 
never learn to do grammar." 

So much for the definition of this particular 
kind of mental pabulum with which children 
have been fed since the days — fifty years before 
Christ was born — when Dionysius Thrax pro- 
duced the first Greek grammar for Roman 
scholars. His name would not be loved by the 
youth of this day, even were it known to them ; 
neither would thgit of Plato, who first made it 
necessary to discriminate between noun and 
verb ; or Aristotle, who went farther and in- 
creased the list of "perplexing parts of speech." 

" A noun is Something that is a noun or a 
name." 

"A Proper Noun is when it is not a Common 
Noun." 

" A pronoun is when you don't want to say a 



44 " The Young Idea:' 

noun and so you say a pronoun. It is when it is 
not a pronoun but a noun." 

I'here is a sort of mental dizziness engen- 
dered by more than one perusal of this most 
lucid elucidation. "A confused notion," says a 
popular writer on education, " is worse than none, 
and the clever boy, under some systems of educa- 
tion, is worse than the dullard." 

"An adjectiv tells you all about it." Eureka ! 
At last we can "solve the riddle of the painful 
earth " in a totally unexpected manner. " All 
about it ! " What comfort for the curious in 
that short and simple sentence ! Truly, there is 
more in this much-abused science than at first 
appears ; but when we learn from the next paper 
that 

" An adjective is an objection to something," 
we are harassed with painful doubts as to the 
real individuality and usefulness of this partic- 
ular sort of word. 

" An adverb is some sort of a verb put onto 
another kind of a verb to tell something about 
it." 

" Adverbible phrase is when you have a sen- 
tence and you say something in it about some- 
thing and its a adverb insted of a noun or pro- 
non or verb or adgetive than its adverble 
phrase." 

Like " poor Jo," this boy might have said 
with truth, " I'm a-gropin', a-gropin'.' 

" The difference between a phrase and a claus 



** The You/ig Idea^ 45 

is the phrase can be in the claus and sometimes 
it is." 

One can hardly help speculating as to where 
the phrase is when it is not in " the claus." 

" A conjunction is your very much surprised 
at something." 

Possibly at the definition. 

'' A interjection is throwing words in a sen- 
tence o dear is interjection because you can't 
pass it with anything." 

Perhaps Prof. Bain is not altogether wrong 
when he says, " The difficulties of grammar are 
the difficulties of all science couched in tech- 
nical language. When the age of grammar is 
reached, the problem of teaching it solves itself. 
It is a practical science having general princi- 
ples which become rules." Perhaps "the age of 
grammar " thus referred to is synonymous with 
" the age of discretion " which often comes late 
in life and sometimes not at all ; at any rate he 
also says, " Experience must have impressed 
teachers with the futility of attempting to teach 
grammar to children. It is the worst economy 
to anticipate the mind's natural aptitude for any 
subject, and the aptitude for grammar does not 
exist at eight or nine years of age." 

The " plague of words " which afflicts so many 
children of the present day, is nowhere so violent 
and so contagious as in grammar lessons, where 
" sound lacking sense " is the rule rather than 
the exception. 



46 " The Young I dear 

" The accidents of a noun is what happens 
to it." 

" Pronouns agree with gender number and 
numbers in the passive voice." 

'' Adjectives of more than one syllable are 
repared by adding some more syllables." 

" A pleonasm is used for a substantive in 
noraitive independent." 

''An adverb is used to mortify a noun and is 
a person place or Thing." 

'' Parsing an adverb is when we compare it 
with its degrees." 

" Sometimes an adverb is turned into a noun 
and then it becomes a noun or pronoun." 

" Hie Subjunctive mood is used in futurity 
when contingency and conjuctions or doubt are 
expressed in dependent clauses," 

Truly, as says Sylvia to Valentine of Verona, 
" A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly 
shot off." But is this the wisdom that is "justi- 
fied of her children "? 

"Grammar," says another writer on this sub- 
ject, " is coming to be taught more in accord- 
ance with common sense and the needs of the 
pupil ; yet a large number still cling to non- 
sensical jumbles about moods, tenses, and gen- 
eral technicalities to the exclusion of letter 
writing and other forms of grammatical compo- 
sition." 

That much of the "jumble of moods, tenses, 
and technicalities," if not nonsensical to the 



'' The Young Idear 47 

mature and logical mind, is more or less so to the 
immature and undeveloped, is proved by the 
experience of every teacher who takes up with 
young children the formal study of this science. 

"Nouns denoting male and female and things 
without sex is neuter." 

*' The cow jumped over the fence is a transive 
nuter verb because fence isent the name of any 
thing and has no sex." 

''A masculine noun is third person plural 
number and has no neuter because it has no 
gender sex." 

" The degrees of comparison is I study you 
study we studys." 

" He speaks lowly lowly is a ajectiv of how he 
speaks and is deprived from low and compard 
low lowing lowerest." 

"Voice is the changing of our voice. We 
have a high and low voice. When we get hoars 
we haven't much of a voice." 

" The indicitive mood represents the verb as 
acting or going to. I shall go." 

" The potential mode show something that 
may can or must be done. I might stay." 

" The subjunctive represents the verb as pos- 
sibly it might be done. If I can." 

" The infinitive is when the verb is going to. 
To dress you must hurry." 

" The imperative is a word in a commanding 
form. You shall." 

Now after years of maundering among moods, 



48 " The Young Idear 

modes, and manners, oftentimes with the happy 
results just stated, the announcement is -made 
that no two persons agree on the subjunctive 
mood in English, and as for the potential, like 
the Chinese, it " must go." 

H. C. Penn states in Education: "The po- 
tential not only fails to dissipate the darkness 
that envelops our native tongue, but it robes 
Latin and Greek and German in darkness thrice 
dense. Common sense, then, requires the po- 
tential to be banished from the grammar." 

The child who gave the definition of this 
word, *' Potential very powerful but not pos- 
sible to act," would probably consider the ban- 
ishment a very wise thing under the circum- 
tances. 

An article on ''Pedantry in Girls' Schools " 
by Elizabeth M. Sewell, an English teacher, 
was lately published in the Nineteenth Century. 
Among other admirable things she says, con- 
cerning this special subject : " Is it the best pos- 
sible use of time, so inestimably valuable in 
these early years, to spend it in learning the names 
which grammarians have affixed to tlie different 
parts of a sentence, and determining whether co- 
ordinate sentences are of the copulative, adver- 
sative, or causative class ? Educated persons 
have the power of speaking grammatically, 
though they may never have been called upon to 
write ten complex sentences with an adjective 
sentence qualifying the subject, and ten more 



« The Young Idea.'' 49 

with an adjective sentence qualifying the object. 
Will not young people as they grow up, if they 
have been perfectly grounded in the simple ele- 
mentary parts of grammatical knowledge, study 
these distinctions and definitions for themselves, 
and learn in a few days what in childhood and 
early youth it would have taken weeks and 
months to acquire ? " 

" Is it wholly through the dulness of boys* 
natures ? " asks J. W. Hales, another English 
teacher, "that they do not love the Conjugation 
at first sight, or conceive a passionate attachment 
for the Irregular Verbs ? What a queer thing 
their nature would be if it did kindle in them 
either flame! At all events it does not." These 
last words carry their own emphasis. 

" Why does the verb dare govern a dative, as 
well as an accusative case ? " asked a conscien- 
tious teacher. " To make it harder for us," was 
the boy's answer ; and it is probable that many 
boys see only that same " tantalizing exaspera- 
tion " when they^are set to search for the connec- 
tion between grammatical cause and effect. 

Comenius began the reaction against " learn- 
ing masses of meaningless rules" — meaningless 
so far as they prove to the child strange tools of 
which he knows only the unfamiliar names, and 
not the use. John Locke helped along the re- 
form, as did also Milton, who complained that 
** our- children are forced to stick unreasonably 
in these grammatic flats and shallows." 



50 " The Young Idea!' 

Roger Ascham inveighed in '' The Scholemas- 
ter," against "the Rewles that are so Busilie 
taught by the Master and so Hardlie learned by 
the Scholer in all common Scholes," saying, 
" The common waie to read the Grammer alone 
by itself is tedious for the Master, hard for the 
Scholer, colde and uncumfortable for them 
bothe." He adds, with some pardonable pride 
concerning his own illustrious pupil, " Our 
moste noble Queen Elizabeth never yet tooke 
Greek or Latin Grammer in her Hande after the 
first declininge of a Noun and a Verb." 

" A passive transitive verb always affirms and 
relates its subject as he brok a winder." 

*' A dejective verb is when it wants some of its 
parts, it is auxiliary and impursenal." 

" A participle is a verb of expression an action 
in state it is an adjective and has a passive sim- 
plification," 

Such are a few of the natural results of our 
persistent use of polysyllabic symbols of 
thought in training the child, to whom the 
sign must always be more significant than the 
thing signified. Often the thought of which 
words are the outward and visible token is as 
obscure to the child as is the geological strata of 
the earth over which he rolls his marbles. He 
is overwhelmed, smothered, strangled, paralyzed, 
and buried alive under " words, words, words." 
Is it strange that the victim who, like Dr. John- 
son in the construction of his dictionary, is 



'' The Young Idea'* 51 

"lost in lexicography," comes to believe tliat all 
books, schools, teachers, education, life itself is 
resolvable into " words, words, words"? With 
Sallust we may say " Enough eloquence, little 
wisdom," for while *' nothing is so cheap as 
words " they are really purchased at an exorbi- 
tant price when they cost us intellectual life and 
liberty. 

Southey's "Old Kaspar " tells his grandchil- 
dren of the " Battle of Blenheim " with much in- 
terest and detail : 

" ' But what good came of it at last?' 
Quoth little Peterkin. 
' Why, that I cannot tell,' quoth he, 
' But 'twas a famous victory,' " 

and Kaspar's family is not the only one in which 
might be propounded the significant question of 
little Peterkin. After skirmishes with nouns, 
verbs, and adjectives ; hand-to-hand fights with 
prepositions, conjunctions, and " adverbible 
phrases"; bold attacks, more or less successful, 
upon the Regulars and Irregulars of the enemy's 
army; assaults upon " nomitiv objectiv and 
posesiv cases," "imperial mood " and "parsed 
tense," and courageous cavalry charges through 
the formidable ranks of relatives and antece- 
dents, subjects and predicates, constructions, 
conjugations, modifications, appositions, appli- 
cations, and exceptions, the conqueror may well 
look with some perplexity upon the mutilated 
grammatical remains, and question the value of 



52 " The Young Idea.** 

his victory. In some respects it is as unprofit- 
able and as unsatisfactory as that of the military 
maneuver of the King of France, who, with forty 
thousand men, ''marched up a hill and then 
marched down again," for, says Wm. Hosea Bal- 
lon, "What we call our grammar is a heteroge- 
neous conglomeration, the laughing-stock of for- 
eign scholars, and the despair of our own," — and 
is such a foeman worthy of so much steel ? 

" A sentence is words on the blackboard, with 
lines all through it, to show you what it is made 
of," is an outgrowth of the " new method " in the 
science of language, whereby an innocent collec- 
tion of words is hung, drawn, and quartered, 
displayed upon the blackboard, *' with lines all 
through it," as spare-ribs, hams, and shoulders 
are exhibited on the iron hooks of the butcher's 
shop. Diagramming, as this modern manipula- 
tion is euphoniously called, is woi, per se, irra- 
tional or ridiculous. It can be used for mental 
stimulus as profitably as the beef or mutton can 
be used for physical nourishment. But we do 
not give beef to babies without danger of gastric 
disturbance, nor can we demand diagrams from 
young brains without running much mental risk. 

In the wise words of the preacher, " To every 
thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose 
under the heaven ; a time to break down and a 
time to build up," but the time for grammatical 
or any other sort of diagramming was not speci- 
fied by the preacher. Probably he considered 



'' The Young Idea:' 53 

that by the time the human intellect had 
reached a phase of development in which such 
gymnastics were possible, there would be devel- 
oped along with it enough of that element tech- 
nically called common sense to prevent youthful 
brains from practising upon these syntactical 
horizontal and cross-bars. In witnessing the 
pitiable contortions of these dazed young athletes, 
we are reminded of a statement written by one of 
them concerning the mental condition of our 
famous Rip Van Winkle after awaking from his 
slumber of a score of years. " He was so be- 
wildered he thought he had taken leave of his 
sentences." 

Says Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst in the Forum for 
March, 1888 : " The way for a boy to learn to talk 
correctly is to talk subject to correction, not to 
apply himself to linguistic anatomy, surgery, and 
dissection. I studied grammar in the ordinary 
way about three weeks — just long enough to find 
out what a genius some people can show in put- 
ting asunder what God hath joined together. It 
is a splendid devic'e for using up a boy's time and 
souring his disposition, but it will not keep him 
out of the grave or help him to pay rent and 
butcher's bills." 

" No child," says Dr. Wm. A. Hammond of 
New York, "ever learned to speak good English 
from studying grammar. It is the most ingenious 
device for forcing an immature brain into early 
decrepitude that the cunning of man has yet 



54 " The Young Idea.'' 

devised. The only reason why it does not do 
more harm is that not one in ten of the pupils 
that come out of our schools know anything about 
it." This opinion is confirmed by Prof. Hill of 
Harvard University. " The methods of the 
schools are radically defective. Every year 
Harvard graduates a certain number of men 
whose manuscript would disgrace a boy of twelve. 
Yet the college cannot be blamed, for she can 
hardly be expected to conduct an English school 
for adults." 

Says Mr. Wm. E. Mead, in the Academy: " If 
the time now spent on English grammar in gram- 
mar schools could be reduced four-fifths, and 
the time spent on some great English classic 
read in illustration of the few grammatical prin- 
ciples worth knowing, it would be a reform in the 
right direction. Boys who leave school at the 
age of twelve are far more likely to pick up 
grammar from literature than they are to pick up 
literature from grammar." 

In 1769 James Hamilton, an English mer- 
chant, took lessons in German on condition that 
he should not be ''bothered" with the grammar. 
He read with his teacher a book of anecdotes, 
translating it word for word. After twelve 
lessons he could read an easy German book. 
In 18 15 he came to New York, published a 
pamphlet upon his methods, and undertook to 
teach adults in fifteen lessons to translate St. 
John's Gospel from French into English, but 



" The Young Idea'' 55 

found ten lessons amply sufficient. He also 
claimed to be able to give boys as much knowl- 
edge of Latin in six months as they usually learn 
in six years. 

Such violent reaction from the old cut and 
dried methods that had grown so tedious and 
distasteful to the generations, could not fail 
to produce a profound impression, especially 
when the new style of instruction proved prac- 
tically successful. Grammar, like money, 
medicine, and machinery, is not an end but 
a means. It is not likely to be studied for its 
own sake when this truth becomes generally 
recognized ; but it has taken a long time to 
even partially convince the world that language 
is a living organism for the use and behoof 
of human beings ; not an array of skeletons 
to be kept in orderly condition in a musty 
cabinet, or a mass of dead flowers to be properly 
pressed and preserved between the leaves of a 
book. Hamilton's innovation was the fore- 
runner of our present Natural Method, the Ber- 
litz, and Meistersthaft methods, which within 
a i^w years have revolutionized the learning of 
languages, and, as advertisers state concerning 
the price of desirable articles, ''brought them 
within the reach of all." 

But even in these improved circumstances we 
must take heed to our ways, for our linguistic 
locomotives cannot — any more than our literal 
ones — run without suitable rails and road-beds. 



56 " The Young Idear 

In the increased speed and comfort of our poly- 
glot palace cars, we are not to consider ourselves 
independent of the car tracks, though it is no 
longer necessary to keep our eyes and our 
thoughts constantly fixed upon them. 

Says Francis W. Lewis of the Rhode Island 
Normal School : " If an English education could 
be made to include by means of its language 
course more real thought discrimination, we 
should not have to depend so much upon 
classically trained men for our thinking." Per- 
haps too, with some of old Roger Ascham's 
" Plaine construinge, diligent parsinge, dailie 
translatinge, cheerfull admonishinge, heedfuU 
amendinge," we might have a little grace as well 
as grammar in the original sentences of some 
of our school children. 

" The bells tolled merrily for a rich mil- 
lionaire." 

" Cora Brown was fortunately the possessor 
of a birthday, . for she was the daughter of rich 
friends." 

" When Mr. Johnson took to love of drink so 
much it made his family on comfortable." 

" The only heat they had was from the end 
of a candle a poor woman had given them and 
it was rather cold." 

" Two carriages were strolling at great speed 
while the snow was falling fastly." 

" As she entered the room a cold damp smell 
met her sight. With this she burst down sob- 
bing like a child," 



*' The Young Idea'' 57 

" She forgot the Lord and all his blessings and 
after that she went and got married." 

" The minister's wife had nine small children 
each one of which was one year younger than 
the other. Though poor she was a diligent 
woman," after all of Avhich we cannot possibly 
be surprised to read that "she fell down scatter- 
ing her senses in all directions." 



CHAPTER V. 

*'the circus of the earth." 

*' JoGRAPHY is a 'scription of the circus of the 
earth." 

Half-a-dozen hands raised to suggest a cor- 
rection. The teacher nods to one of the eager 
faces. 

" You may tell us, Johnnie." 

*' Jogfy is 'scription of the suffis of the earth." 

The '' committee-man " smiles encouragingly 
upon the glib reciter. 

" What do you mean by ' description ' ? " he 
blandly asks. 

** A 'scription is tellin' you about it." 

" Very good. What is geography a descrip- 
tion of ? " 

" 'Scription of the earth." 

'" What is the earth ? " 



58 '' The Young Idea:* 

Silence. Blank stare from the class. 

" You know, of course, what the earth is ? " 

One hand raised cautiously, followed by 

"Europe, Asia, Africa." 

" Have you ever seen the earth, boys ? " 

Class in chorus, "No, sir," with a feeble tenor 
solo somewhere, "Yes, sir, on the map." 

One of our daily papers narrates the following : 

"Mamma," inquired little Waldo Bunker of 
Boston, who is spending the winter in Florida, 
" What is that body of water ! " 

" The Atlantic ocean, my dear." 

"The Atlantic ocean!" exclaimed little 
Waldo in amazement. " Why, I thought the 
Atlantic ocean was near Boston." 

Prof. Geikie in the Popular Science Monthly 
remarks : " Every question in geography should 
be one which requires for its answer that the 
children have actually seen something with 
their own eyes and taken note of it." Little 
Waldo had evidently done both of these things, 
and yet was "all at sea" on the bosom of the 
broad Atlantic. 

The Christian Union reports the case of a 
child in a western prairie country who was 
studying geography and asked her teacher if the 
Alps and Andes were as high as the steeple of 
the Congregational church. 

Says Horace Mann, " In geography we put a 
quarto-sized map, or a globe no larger than a 
goose-egg, into a child's hand and invite him to 



" The Young Idea'' 59 

spread out his mind over continuous oceans and 
archipelagoes at once. This does not expand 
the mind, but belittles the object to the nutshell 
capacity of the mind." 

This invitation to " spread out the mind " is 
courteously accepted, and the mind proceeds to 
spread in the following manner upon a slate pro- 
vided for the purpose : 

" A arkipelago is made up off a great lot of 
little islands all round in the ocean." 

" An archipelago is when there is a good 
many islands. Coney island isent an archi- 
pelago." 

'' An archpelago is something that casts up 
'fire and water Vesuvius." 

" That a youth of ten should conceive the 
plains of India with their vertical sun, peculiar 
vegetation, strange animals, and dusky popula- 
tion, is not to be supposed," says Prof. Bain in 
his '' Education as a Science." 

There are other countries also which the youth- 
ful mind can not comprehend. 

" Part of Australia is vague," asserts one, with- 
out danger of contradiction. 

" Australeya ust to be used by the English to 
keep men on that was not bad enough to be 
killed. Some farms would raise as much as five 
hundred thousand. The English long ago ust 
to send their prisoners there when they did any- 
thing not worth hanging." 

*' Australia is a very large country in Europe 



6o " The Young Idea.'' 

and has all its bad men and they have found a 
great many gold and diamonds there and Sid- 
ney is one of the chief countries in it which is in 
New South Wales." 

Sometimes the mind does not spread quite far 
enough, as in the case of the little Nantucket 
girl who asserted that *' California is west of Off 
Island," a certain body of land surrounded by 
water,quite near her own home. Possibly the 
answer might have been accepted if she had 
only specified how far west. 

The African continent has for a long time 
piqued our curiosity, and the source of its 
largest river has been persistently searched for ; 
yet somehow we fail to be satisfied with the 
statements intended to throw light on these 
hidden things : 

" The interior of Africa is principally used for 
purposes of exploration." 

" Africa has no interior and you can't ex- 
plore it." 

" The Nile is in New York a country of 
Africa." 

In some other statements we receive the full 
value of '' the sign," yet hardly grasp *' the 
thing signified." 

" The Gulf of St. Lawrence rises in Itaska 
Lake and empties into Mississippi." 

** San Francisco is a river in Brazil." 

** The capital of Kentucky is Frankfort on 
the Maine." 



" The You7ig Idea:* 6i 

" Alexandria is the capitol of Russia." 
Another feature of this country is that 
*' The serfs of Russia is little animals all 

white except the tips ut their tails which is black." 
" The Catskill mountains are also in Russia." 
" London is the largest city of the United 

States or Russia or France." 

If that particular pupil should "guess again" 

he might hit it. 

One might well find himself in ''Egyptian 

darkness " if 

" Egypt is in Syria," and 

" Syria is a kind of turpentine." 

Some persons may be surprised to find that 

" The greater antills are sugar, oranges, coffee 

and indigo." 

" An alligator is the largest insect in North 

America." 

" Leopards, tigers and elephants inhabit 

North America." 

"The camel grows in Greenland." 
" There is snakes all over the frigid zone." 
" Bears are the growth of tropical countries." 
" The tropics produce a great many kinds of 

wild beast and figs." 

Some geographical statements tend to broaden 

our views. For instance, 

" The climate of a country is trading with 

other countries." 

" Domestic commerce is fishing. Foreign 

commerce is fishing with a pole." 



62 " The Young I dear 

" The boundaries of a country is things that 
go all round it." 

" When we bound a country we tell where all 
the places are near it." 

" Mountains is when the ground is all piled 
up high." 

" Volcanoes are things you fire off Forth of 
July." 

Horace Mann tells of a text-book of geogra- 
phy published in Massachusetts, claiming in its 
preface " special adaptation to children " on the 
second page of which occurred this paragraph, 

" Zenith and Nadir — two Arabic words im- 
porting their own significance." 

This will do to accompany a geography lesson 
which Rousseau tells of reading, beginning, 

*' What is the world ? " 

*' A pasteboard globe," and he further adds, 
" When you are ready to teach this child geogra- 
phy, you get together your globes and your 
maps, and what machines they are ! Why, 
instead of using all these representations, do 
you not begin by showing him the object itself 
so as to let him know what you are talking of ? 
I venture to say that after two years of globes 
and cosmography, no child of ten, by any rules 
they give him, could find his way from Paris to 
St. Denis. And yet these are the knowing 
creatures who can tell you where Pekin, Ispa- 
han, Teheran and all the countries of the 
world are ! " 



The Young Idea'* 6 



They can tell more than that, too, "just as 
easy as not." 

" The time is never alike all over the 
earth." 

" Valleys exist to hold up fissures in the earth's 
surface." 

" The whole world has a structure which per- 
vades North America." 

'' The earth is very eccentric. It has the most 
popular zone of the globe." 

" All globes have imaginary lines and zones 
our globe has several of these." 

" Tropical fruits are found all spread out 
where they grow in Cancer and Crapricon." 

This sounds very much like a sentence printed 
in an old geography still in existence, "Albany 
lias four hundred inhabitants all standing with 
their gable ends to the street." 

Bain truly calls mathematical geography " the 
greatest task of the purely conceptive power," 
adding that " it requires very delicate manipula- 
tion on the part of the teacher." But the greatest 
skill as well as delicacy in handling the Tropic 
of Cancer, the North Pole, and a degree of longi- 
tude, will not prevent, in minds lacking this 
power of conception, such statements as 

" The tropic of Cancer is a very hopeless dis- 
ease"; indeed it is hopeless — when it reaches 
this stage. 

" The Tropic of Cancer is something going 
round the earth to show you where you are "; 



64 " The Yomig Idear 

this might be useful on a dark night or in a 
London fog. 

*' The Tropic of Cancer is south of an imagin- 
ary line drawn on the map and is reckoned from 
Greenland "; even a change in the syllable of the 
last word might leave much to be desired in the 
definition. 

'' Latitude and longitude is something depend- 
ent on the air"; truly this is giving to an '* airy 
nothing " a name if not "" a local habitation." 

All that is needed to complete this profitable 
course of study is for the pupils to succeed in 
carrying out the command of a trustee, — 

" Now, children, take your slates and draw two 
imaginary lines bisecting each other at an obtuse 
triangle." 

Any human being who would require from lit- 
tle children knowledge of the artificial divisions 
of mathematical geography with their unintelli- 
gible terms, should be served as sinners are dis- 
posed of in a certain Italian city, if the following 
statement is intended to be believed : 

" The streets of Venice is water and they have 
boats to sale in and if a man breaks the rules 
they take him out on the bridge and cut off his 
head or drown him." In some cases it might be 
well to do both in order "to make assurance 
double sure" that he would no longer torture 
the little ones. 

In view of the stupid ways in which geography 
is taught and studied — not learned — it is refresh- 



" The Young Idea!* ^5 

ing to read what the study might be made as set 
forth by the eloquent Herder : 

'' I know few sciences so rich m necessary 
and pleasant facts. I wonder how any noble, 
wdl-educated youth in the best years of h.s ue 
should not love the science before all others. 
A knowledge of physical geography is as impor- 
fant as it is'easil/and pleasantly entertaining It 
must be the most pleasing picture, full of ar , 
Dlans change It travels through the earth, 
Snds'oiU abo^t people, coiintries, and customs^ 
If all these are made vivid, then it must be a 
stupid monster who by that means does not re- 
ceive into his head and into his heart a great and 
refined perception." He thinks that there are 
many ''short-sighted barbarians who if they 
Snly learned geography and history better m 
their youth "would not make the narrow bands 
of their heads a measure of the world, and the 
customs of their corner the rule and guide of all 
times, climates, and people " _ 

There is a little flavor of this narrowness m 
the pupil's statem'ent, 

"The rapid growth of New York City as a 
commercial center can be accounted for by the 
fact that Castle Garden is located there. 

Prof. Geikie says, " Geography serves as com- 
mon ground on which the claims of literature 
history, and science may be reconciled. Yet it 
is doubtful if he would endorse the statement of 
an amateur artist who wrote in reference to his 



(>^ " T/ie Yoim^ Idear 



work — a map of Ireland, — '' I had not room to 
put down the island on one side which Robinson 
Crusoe discovered and wrote his story books a 
good many centuries ago." 

Probably there is no study which can serve as 
well as geography to develop a sense of proportion 
and relation which can be carried into every line 
of life. In this respect it ranks with astronomy. 
Yet with all the array of maps which the child 
looks at with wide-open but uncomprehending 
eyes, he sometimes receives so little idea of the 
facts they are intended to show that he writes, 

'"' The United States is most as big as En- 
gland." 

That England with Wales is not larger than 
the State of Georgia ; that with the addition of 
South Carolina, the two States will represent 
more area than England, Wales and Scotland 
combined, — how many pupils in geography learn 
anything of such proportions as these ? An 
interesting experiment in this matter was lately 
tried in a grammar-school class, every member of 
which had made a creditable showing in a difficult 
written examination. Several of them believed 
England to be " the largest country in the 
world," because they had " studied the most 
about it," and '' because it had so many kings 
and queens more than any other country ever 
had," and " because London was there," and 
"because it was," as a little homesick Britisher 
wrote on his slate, '* so orful far off." The 



'' The Young Idea:* 67 

prevailing idea seemed to be that France 
ranked next in size — perhaps because of kings, 
queens, or Paris — and that America stood third 
on the list. 

*' For to-morrow's lesson you may get from 
there to there," says the teacher, and the child- 
ren " get " it. The lesson is " perfect " — *' nobody 
missed a single word." Sure enough, not a word, 
but how about the ideas which the words are 
supposed to convey ? These trustful and obe- 
dient children make even less opposition to 
this sort of provender than did the countryman 
who went for the first time into a city restaur- 
ant. After half an hour's diligent labor at a 
table, he meekly beckoned to the head-waiter 
who at once approached him, and to whom, 
holding up the bill of fare, he thus addressed 
himself, '* Mister, I've et from thar to thar, an' 
ef it don't make no difference to you, I'd like to 
skip from thar to thar." Possibly the children 
would like to skip occasionally, though they re- 
frain from mentioning the fact, perhaps from 
fear that it may make a difference to their head- 
waiter. And as'an English teacher says, " We 
succeed in making our chickens eat, and if some 
of them can be brought to wax fat mentally, 
shall we not justify our wisdom ?" But there is 
a suggestion of abnormal growth in 

" Mt. Everest is the highest mountain known, 
its latitude being most 30 feet." 

"Vesuvius is a highly cultivated plain rising 
on the shores of Naples." 



68 " T/ie Young Idea:* 

** The temperate zone has a very mean tem« 
perature." 

" New Zealand is a country of the caniballs, 
where they eat the Missunries they send there." 

" Siberia is where the Czar of Russia goes to 
stay in his snow palace in Petersburg." 

*' Cape Horn is near the end of Africa on the 
way to California." 

" The Ismus of Panama is situated in a 
canal." 

** The three longest rivers are Mississippi, 
Maine, and London." 

" Cortes is not on the map of Mexico," — and 
in some surprising statements in seismography: 

''Earthquakes are bursts of heat." 

** Erthquakes make sometimes a some slite 
motion of the earth," with the sadly significant 
and somewhat euphemistic statement, 

*' Earthquakes are never satisfactory." 

The following is a report of a representative 
geography lesson in an English school : 

*' 'We will now take the coast line of Soulh 
America from Cape Corrientes southward. The 
name of the village south of Corrientes ?' 

" ' Loberia.' 

" ' Next feature ? ' 

" ' Asuncion Point.' 

" * Next ? ' 

" ' Bahia Blanca.' 

" ' Next ? ' 

" * Bermeja Head.' 



'^ 2'he Young Idea!' 69 

*' ' No, Brown, you have omitted two names of 
interest. What is the omission, Robinson ? ' 

" ' Point Rasa.' 

" * Precisely. I fear you are a little weak in 
geography, Brown. Go on.' 

*' ' Norte Point, San Josef Peninsula, Delgada 
Point, Nuevo Gulf.' 

"Wearisome hours were spent in committing 
huge lists of names to memory ; the stuff hung 
about in their minds with stupefying effect for a 
month or so ; then it all faded away and only a 
memory of sickening frivolity remained. What 
with length of rivers, heights of mountains, 
depths of oceans, and such like, it is probable 
that each pupil wasted three months of his price- 
less two years. The girls learned geography 
until they could draw a map of Jamaica, or 
Kamschatka, or Vancouver Island with perfect 
ease, and they thus gained a sort of useful 
knowledge which they easily forgot within three 
months. They could tell you the height of 
Mount Dwalaghid to a foot, but of all things 
gracious and lovely they were left as ignorant 
as Bechuanas." 



70 " The Young Idea 



CHAPTER VI. 

" SEEING INTO THINGS." 

" History is seeing into things." 

'' Without the uses of History everything goes 
to the bottom." 

" Ambition is the very element of History ac- 
cording how it be used." 

"' And then trace back when antiquity was 
buried in the dark recesses of oblivion swaying 
for a ray of light to grapple a mystery which if 
to be recorded upon the pages of History would 
illuminate the whole industrial world." 

*' History is a most interesting study when 
you know something about it." 

It is interesting, for example, to learn that 

** Mohammed was born in the sacred city of 
Mecca, in the year 570. He did not go out into 
Public life until he was about 40 years of age 
he had always been a rich merchant he could 
neither read nor write after his fortyeth birth- 
day he became a christian and went to the old 
communion of God. He fled July 15, 622 and 
died in 632 A.D. Hegira was the wife of Mo- 
hammed," though when we also learn that 

" The Hegira was the flight of the Israelites 
into Egypt," the conflicting statements give us a 
considerable sense of bewilderment, which is 
not diminished by the third assertion, 



'' The Young Idea:' 71 

*' The Hegira was when Peter the hermit tried 
to get the Crusades from the holy Land," 

Not every one cares about the particular his- 
torical event so variously described, but the com- 
ments of the Massachusetts teacher in whose 
class the story of Mohammed originated are cer- 
tainly worthy of a moment's attention : 

" If reform is your aim, it seems to me that 
the fact of these blunders being made by high- 
school pupils who in one or two years, some- 
times in a few months, graduate and enter 
college, might be emphasized. The reasons for 
such displays I find is the fact that pupils 
enter the high school without knowing how to 
read." 

If these last five words were italicized, the 
remark would be in order, " The italics are 
ours," but, to the thouglitful reader, neither 
italics nor comments are necessary. We are, 
however, reminded of a similar statement by one 
of our most popular educators: "Pupils often 
appear dull in grammar, geography, and history 
merely because they are poor readers. A child 
is not qualified to use any text-book until he is 
able to read with facility, as we are accustomed 
to speak, in groups of words." 

Apropos of Peter and his Holy Wars, it will 
doubtless seem incredible — to anybody but a 
teacher — that some professional humorist did not 
perpetrate the following : 

" The Crusaders were women who did not want 



72 *' The Young Idea'' 

men to get drunk. My Ant Ann was a Cru- 
sader in Ohio." 

*' The Crusaders said that for nearly two 
centuries they were holy wars and did great 
good in the barbarous and beneficial change to 
society." 

" These military expeditions were undertaken 
to rescue the tomb of Mohammed from the 
christians who were buried in Palestine.'' 

" Peter the Hermit wanted to get the holy 
sepulcler out of the hands of the people and 
sovereigns of Europe." 

*' Peter the Third was a painful pilgrimage 
traveling all round noted for his monkey en- 
thusiasm." This last may possibly have emana- 
ted from the brain that produced the definition, 
already quoted, *' Monasteries, a place for mon- 
sters." 

Evidently our same poor Peter has in some way 
become mysteriously identified with an English 
institution of a hundred years later: 

" Magna Charta was a great man, and he was 
called Magna Charta because he used to go 
about preaching." 

Next we are illuminated concerning the decree 
which plunged a whole nation into darkness: 

'* The feudal system was a law which was that 
everybody should have their lights out by eight 
o'clock in the evening." 

The same country had another peculiar insti- 
tution: 



(i 



The Young Idea" 73 



Doomsday Book was a law that if any poor 
man should kill a deer they sh.ould have his eyes 
put out." 

" The Wars of the Roses was between the 
Lombards who had the white rose, and the York 
who had the red rose. Result, The house of 
York was assassed." "Assassed"! The most 
daring imagination falters in its attempt to con- 
ceive what fate befell that unfortunate house- 
hold. 

To return again to the beginning of the 
calamity: "It was in the Reign of Richard II. 
Margaret the sister of the Queen was blind and 
her lover came to see her and he asked for a 
white rose and she kept picking red ones and the 
result was getting a flower for England." 

Now we know all about it, notwithstanding the 
words of Rousseau on the subject of history. 
" Do you imagine," he says, " that the true 
understanding of events can be separated from 
that of their causes and effects, and that the 
historic and the moral are so far asunder that 
the one can be understood without the other ? 
If you intend to estimate actions by their moral 
relations, try to make your pupils understand 
these relations, and you will discover whether 
history is adapted to their years." 

'* The men who have striven to get at the 
spirit of history, have found it by studying the 
individual," decides Prof. Root of Hamilton 
College. Probably it was one of the young men 



74 '' The Young Idea:' 

striving to that end — too young, apparently, to 
strive successfully, — who discovered that 

'' Joan of Arc was rather pious and very gen- 
teel." 

" Cromwell owed his elevation to his ascent to 
greatness, and because he was often in the senate 
and in the field of domestic retirement." 

Another one discovers from this study of the 
individual that 

"Zenophon died 1865 A.D." 

** Ceasar was 144 years old." 

" Franklin and Ceasar were Frenchmen.** 

" Napoleon was a Russian Czar." 

*' Napoleon was the first king of France." 

'' Napoleon fought at the battle of Bunker 
Hill." 

'* Xerxes was the son of Darius king of Eng- 
land," and 

'' Maria Antoinette was daughter of William 
the Conqueror and wife of Napoleon," though 
this last goes beyond the individual and attempts 
to settle three monarchs in one sentence. 

It is evident that if Prof. Root is right, some- 
body or something must be wrong. Horace 
Walpole would consider that the subject itself 
was to blame. " Anything but history," he 
cried, "for history must be all false ! " Yet so 
far as known he had never read on any scholar's 
examination paper what younger eyes have been 
privileged to see; 

" The Phonecians are natives of Venice." 



" The Young Idear 75 

" The Spartans settled England." 

" The RoQians, after conquering England, 
taught the Brittons to make railroads." 

" The commons chose aldermen, and the as- 
sembly opened at Versailes." 

" 1216 ships brought eleven settlers to new- 
England." 

" Wen the colonis turned their attention to 
tobaco they experiensed a strok of prosperity 
which nearly proved fatal to the destruction of 
the settlement." 

" Valley Forge was one of the most blood- 
shed battles of the revolution killing the in- 
habitants." 

" Flour and bacon were two provisions of the 
Ordinance of 1787." 

Herbert Spencer does not assert the falsity of 
history, but goes farther, stating that it does 
not exist. " That which constitutes history 
proper so called is in great part omitted from 
works on the subject." It must be, then, be- 
cause it is omitted that pupils so often fail to 
find it. Emerson.agrees with Spencer. ''There 
is properly no history. All public facts are to 
be individualized, all private facts are to be 
generalized. There is at the surface infinite 
variety of causes ; at the center there is sim- 
plicity of cause. How many are the acts of one 
man in which we recognize the same character ! 
All the facts of history preexist in the mind as 
laws. The instinct of the mind, the purpose of 



70 " The Young Idea.'" 

nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the 
signal narrations of history." 

Who can gainsay this wisdom of our philoso- 
pher ? But once admit it, and is not one equally 
compelled to admit the proposition laid down 
with emphasis by Prof. Bain, " There can be 
no systematic teaching of history in school 
years " ? Froude, who has made the study of 
the subject the main occupation of his life says, 
" History is concerned as much as science with 
external facts. History depends upon exact 
knowledge ; on the same minute, impartial, 
discriminating observation and analysis of par- 
ticulars which is equally the basis of science. 
The business of the historian is not with im- 
mediate realities. History can be obtained only 
by scientific method." It needs but little 
thought to understand that the mental attitude 
necessary to the writer of human records is 
equally essential to the student of them. 

'' You cannot learn everything," says one of 
England's wisest men. '' The objects of knowl- 
edge have multiplied beyond the powers of the 
strongest mind to keep pace with them all. You 
must choose among them." As regards this 
special line of study, why would it not be true 
and comfortable economy to " skip " the long 
lists of all the names and all the dates of all the 
battles fought in all the wars of all the countries 
through all the ages, over all the earth? With 
them might go the names of all the commanders 



" The Young Idea*' 77 

in all these contests, and by great effort we might 
resign ourselves to sacrificing also the numerical 
statements of the killed and wounded on each 
side, particularly as the correct number is in 
every case as uncertain a matter as the location 
of the mausoleum of Moses. '' It is a good 
thing to make an end of what might go on for 
ever," and to consider the mass of names, dates, 
and figures which will doubtless accrue in the 
next century, to be learned by millions yet 
unborn, is enough to give one intellectual cere- 
bro-spinal meningitis on the spot. 

A history lesson in an English training-school 
for teachers is thus described: 

What event happened on September, 1066 ? ' 
'' ' Don't know, sir.' 

" 'This is serious, Mr. Jones. The very first 
date ! How long did you devote to the two 
pages of dates which I set ? ' 

About an hour, sir. I had a good deal of 
other work to do.' 

" * An hour ! An hour to the most important 
period of history? This is scandalous, out- 
rageous ! ' Then a solemn entry was made, and 
Jones's doom was settled. 

" Some poor souls labored for hours to learn 
a screed of dull balderdash which was without 
interest, sequence, or value. Some could reel 
off a list of half a thousand battles, giving the 
year when fouglit, the day of the month, the 
number killed, the names of the commanders on 
each side. But many lads suffered cruelly, 



78 '* The Young Idear 

especially when they reached the Wars of the 
Roses and the battles in which William III. took 
part. The grand test ran something in this way: 
'Write down what liappened in 1086, 1088, looi, 
1 1 13. 1 139.' The students scribbled, then the 
teacher cried, ' Change papers ! ' He droned 
out the exact words of the miserable little book, 
and each man scored out the errors on the paper 
in front of him. To omit a semi-colon was cul- 
pable; to leave out a preposition was worse; to 
substitute a word for one of those used in the 
book was worse still; while to omit the day of 
the month on which somebody signed something 
or killed somebody else was regarded as next 
door to criminal. Each error cancelled the 
whole answer in which it occurred. Such tom- 
foolery as this went on for about three hours per 
week. Slow pupils worked till their heads were 
splitting and their lives were a misery, for they 
always feared lest some treacherous date should 
slide away at the most critical moment." 

But the significance of the^iext paragraph ! 

" The man who conducted the silly torture was 
a sound historical student, and no one knew 
better than he did the exact lines which an in- 
telligent teacher should follow. But he was 
cramped." (Have we any similar cases in this 
country ?) " The precious departmental system 
crippled him, and he passed the best years of his 
life in starving the minds of some of the cleverest 
young men in England." 

There is such a thing as " doing evil that good 



*' The Young Idea." 79 

may come," though few criminals can take refuge 
in that excuse. There are also some fortunate 
natures who are always " from seeming evil still 
educing good," Such was Hon. Andrew D. 
White, for some years President of Cornell Uni- 
versity. The teaching in history which he re- 
ceived at Yale College, as " dreary, stale, flat, 
and unprofitable," according to all accounts, as 
the lessons above described, led him to revolt 
and originate a method of his own for which 
the world has much cause to thank him. 

" To cram a lad's mind with mere names of 
places he never saw or will see," declares one of 
our most eminent scholars and historians, 'Svith 
statements of facts which he cannot possibly un- 
derstand and which must remain merely words 
to him, — this, in my opinion, is like loading his 
stomach with marbles. It is wonderful what a 
quantity of things of this kind a quick boy will 
commit to memory, how he will show off in 
examinations and delight the heart of his 
teacher." 

" History," Froude says sorrowfully, '' often 
seems to me like a child's box of letters with 
which we can spell any word we please. We 
have only to pick out such letters as we want, 
arrange them as we like, and say nothing about 
those which do not suit our purpose." Some- 
times it seems as if the box of letters was shaken 
vigorously and the word was spelled by chance, 
producing crazy combinations like 



8o " The Young I dear 

"Aristotle was born 1384 B. C. in Syracuse, 
New York." 

" Herodetus was a descendant of Herod the 
great and he was king of the Jews." 

" Rome through the means of Sicily had her 
power increased and became as an empire more 
promiscuous." 

" Columbus named the American Continent 
after Queen Isabella because she gave money for 
his early education," 

" The Hundred Years War was characterized 
by several pitched events." 

" The period of Charles H. was called the 
Resurrection." 

" Charles Second was given to debauchery and 
other terrible sports." 

" One of the principal causes of the Revolu- 
tion was the Stand Back." Some minds, not 
enlightened by this statement, might have gone 
on for years laboring under the delusion that it 
was on account of an entirely different atti- 
tude. 

'' Fort sumpter was in janury and the president 
called for 15 men this was in baltimoie"; yet 
according to Cicero, " History is the witness of 
the times, the torch of truth, the life of mem- 
ory, the teacher of life, the messenger of an- 
tiquity." 

That much of the study of History is a mere 
chewing of '' words, words, words," seems pretty 
clearly attested by such statements as 



The Youn^ Idea:' 8i 



" The cynics were a sort of swans kept by the 
Greek people." 

" The Gladiaters were the festivals celebrated 
in honor of the Romans." 

'' The Treaty of Utrecht was fought between 
the Zulus and the English." 

It may be discouraging to realize the truth of 
Professor Bain's words, " The teaching of His- 
tory almost appears to defy method," but our 
spirits rise instantly at ihe very next words: 
'' The fact that it presents no difficulty to 
minds of ordinary education, and is, moreover, 
an interesting form of literature, is a sufficient 
reason for not spending much time upon it. 
The highest form of History is represented in 
the great works on the subject, ancient and 
modern. These are the self-chosen, private 
reading of our mature years." 

No doubt the majority of teachers would be 
more than willing that the study should be pur- 
sued in that particular, personal, and private 
manner ; then if the student concluded that 

" Cleopatra was a man," or that, 

" Cleopatra killed herself because she could 
not win the love of Cicero," or that 

" Cleopatra was a very wicked woman who 
was persecuted by Antony and died of the bight 
of an asp or the prick of a poisonous needle and 
then found she had to go Rome in chains," no 
instructor need to lie awake nights trying to 
devise ways and means of giving children correct 



82 '' The Yoimg Idea." 

ideas of the fascinating queen whose fate was 
settled by somebody in the declaration, 

" Cleopatra was conquered by the Duke of 
Wellington," and who is thus passed down the 
ages : " Cleopatra was the first king of Egypt and 
Cleopatra's Needle was erected in his honor." 

Nor would this private and interesting reading 
convey such information as this: 

" Julius Caesar conquered all the known world. 
He crossed the Rubicon to Alexandria. He 
made a conspiracy against Rome but was suc- 
cessful. At the senate they pulled their cloaks 
around him and he said What, Brutus thou too 
Casca ? x\nd in the year 27 B.C. in the 44lh 
year of his reign and the seventy-sixth of his 
life he left a wife." 

"Why in the French and Indian war it was 
difficult for Washington to fight against theBrit- 
isli was because British was well armed while 
Washington's army was composed of all sorts of 
weapons of every denomination." 

Not only Massachusetts, but Maine, Connec- 
ticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Illinois, and California high schools are 
represented l3y these specimens of historical 
erudition. The horrible suspicion is forced upon 
us that there may be some truth in the statement 
that these advanced pupils, candidates for col- 
leges, have entered the high schools without 
knowing How to Read ! Still another suspicion 
arises, that they do not know How to Spell, 



" The Young Idea:' 83 

judging from some productions which have the 
appearance of being written in a foreign tongue. 
How came these children in our high schools ? 

*' Aristidees whose stern integrity was called 
aristidees the j uste wrote on a Shell that a Citezen 
requested he would write his name on it and 
continued to call him the juste till he was tired 
of calling him so and his Sirname was receaved 
through the integrity of his Rivall who banished 
him ten. years for his ostrasism." 

*' Learning without thought," says Confucius, 
*' is labor lost ; thought without learning is per- 
ilous." Truly there is much loss, though little 
peril of either thought or learning, in some of 
our schools. 

"When the Fammin had killed every one in 
Rome Alarick went to Rome and said to them 
all the money there is in the world is here and 
you shall have the hole of it if you do not take 
Refug in the churches." 

" The sarasens came to England with William 
the Conquror and -found the sarasen Language 
they made all the People write there lawes in it 
and they brought the fudale system with them 
and rang it at every night at 12 oclock at night." 

" The resurrection in Paris was headed by the 
Basteel and the royal Family was an ungovern- 
able mob." 

" Louis sixteen succeeded his granfather 20 
years old. Turgot was made into finances and 
malsherbet into the minister of Interier." 



84 *' The Young Idea' 

" The convention divided Robespiere into 
two violent parties with Danton at the head of 
the other one and they executed a charge of 
tyranny." 

" After all," writes a young essayist on the 
subject, "every one must reach there goal in His- 
tory by the piercing of a subtule nature through 
the great abex of life," if anybody can find out 
what that is. 



CHAPTER VII. 

" INTELLIGENCE FOR THE WORLD." 

It is almost a pity that " when Sir Philip Sid- 
ney made writing fashionable everybody took to 
writing some intelligence for the literary world," 
It is almost a pity that so many took to writ- 
ing before it was fashionable, if the children 
of to-day must learn all the writers* names, 
deeds and misdeeds ; all the titles, plots, and 
characteristics of their works. 

When Socrates gave the list of the things that 
Alcibiades had learned, it was a very short one. 
" I pretty accurately know what thou hast learned. 
Thou hast learned, then, thy letters, to play on 
the cithara, and to wrestle," and says Philip Gil- 
bert Hamerton in his Jntellectual Life, " Such 
an education was possible to an Athenian, 



" The Young Idea'' 85 

because a man situated as Alcibiades was situ- 
ated in the intellectual history of the world had 
no past behind him which deserved his attention 
more than the present which surrounded him. 
What English parent would be content that his 
son should have the education of Alcibiades, or 
of Horace, or of Shakespeare ! Yet although 
the burdens laid upon the memory have been 
steadily augmented, its powers have not in- 
creased. Our brains are not better constituted 
than those of our forefathers, although where 
they learned one thing we attempt to learn six." 

One of these six — or sixteen, as the case may 
be, for our courses of study are '' movable feasts," 
— is English Literature ; a mere trifle, to be sure, 
only the lives of a few hundred men and women 
with their writings in prose and poetr}^, in every 
possible style, and in every degree of excellence. 
Prof. Bain says, " It is the nature of science to 
be more or less dry, but Literature is nothing if 
not interesting," so young minds have that great 
advantage in this particular study, — it entertains 
as well as instructs.' But his next words are 
not so encouraging : "We may admire Chaucer, 
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, but they are 
not the one thing needful in an English class. 
Not one of these writers is child's play." But 
some children play with them, nevertheless, with 
varying results : 

" Chaucer's sattires are never overwhelmed by 
unkindness." 



S6 " T/ie Young I dear 

" Chaucer tried to do good to his following 
beings." 

''Chauser's works add there little to Litera- 
tur." 

*' His works Chaucer contains rare scraps of 
humour." 

" A flow of sweet religion runs through all the 
writings written by Chaucer." 

'' Spencer's were distinguished by humerous 
and deep religious sentiments. His writeings." 

*' Spenser was not happy when his wife and 
infant were burned to death in sight of the in- 
surgents." 

" He was not so very fond of Ireland though 
he lived in a very nice place where the queen 
sent him to." 

" Spenser went back to England sos he could 
die broken hearted of grief." 

• ' Spenser was a policy sort of man though quite 
good." 

" Shakespeare is the myraid headed Shake- 
speare he wrote a very good number of pieces." 

" Shakespeare was a man very famous in his 
day, and left his bed to his wife." 

"William Shakspear was a good writer. He 
was born on Stamford, and nobody knows any- 
thing about him." 

''Shakespears friends wrote on his grave that 
hed be cursed if he moved his bones." 

*' Shaki spear was buried in a graveyard and 
England has never dared to move him," 



The Youfig Idea.** 87 



n 



Hamlet is a very good play in some points, 
but on the wliole is rather melancoly," 

" Julius Caesars play has not got the right name 
because its Brutus and Casius, who is the hero 
really," and it may be timely to note just here 
that " Brutus and Cassius were two dramatic 
poets." 

"Otello was somewliat jealous of lago and 
smothered his wife." 

" lago is the very person of hypocritesy," 

" The Merchant of Venice only had a pound 
of flesh." 

" Shylock had no mercy on any body who 
failed in business." 

" Portia was a judge dressed up in a womans 
clothes and old Shylock called her Daniel." 

" Portias recitation about mercy is considered 
one of Shakspere's best prose compositions." 

" King Leer died after he was out bareheaded 
in a very bad storm." 

" Cornelia was the most becoming daughter of 
King Lear," 

^* Macbeth had sdme of his wifes ambition 
and set her up to kill the king." 

" Macbeth did not really see a dagger but he 
saw one in his mind and clutched wildly at the 
handle." 

" Macbeth was always very brave until he 
heard some one knock on a gate." 

" He said if he had got to kill Duncan hed 
like to do it as quick as possible so as to get it 
all off of his mind." 



88 <' The Young Idea.*' 

" Lady Macbeth was wife to Macbeth he was 
her husband." 

" Lady Macbeth used to get out of bed some 
nights and go walking round to wash her 
hands." 

" Lady Macbeth was a very tenderhearted 
woman who loved her husband and became very 
horrible and a monstrous." 

"The Weird Sisters were Twin Sisters." 

*' The Weird Sisters were in caldrons and kept 
stirring them up." 

'^ If one reads Shakeper's works he finds 
many several interesting and mysterous things 
in him." 

" Miltons works are energetical and quite 
graceful." 

" Milton was rather cross being blind." 

" Milton advised everybody to get a Divorce," 

" Milton was so handsome they thought he 
was a lady in christ college." 

" Miltons paredise lost is quite a poem on the 
whole." 

" Paradise Lost is the angels who fell down 
out of heaven pursued by satan who was also a 
angle." 

'' Milton wrote the Deserted Village or Ham- 
let." 

Prof. Bain further says : " The teaching of 
English Literature is a mixture of what is easy, 
intelligible, and interesting to the young, with 
what is technical, abstruse, and accessible only 



" The Young Idea.'' 89 

to the mature mind. There is no possibility of 
contriving a course that shall in every point 
keep the steady level of the juvenile capacity." 
Well, if that cannot be done, let us bring the 
juvenile capacity up to the steady level of Lit- 
erature. What else are our schools for ? Are 
we to be deterred by such trifles as technicalities 
and abstruseness ? " The great fault in the early 
teaching is to address it to minds so little ac- 
quainted with literary qualities as not to com- 
prehend the meaning of the terms employed." 
But does not education consist in making minds 
comprehend ? 

Says a prominent educator : '' Literature is one 
of the very last things to be attempted. To ap- 
preciate it requires much education, often much 
experience of life, great familiarity with lan- 
guage, and often with social habits and customs." 
But he is vastly mistaken if he thinks we at- 
tempt it too early or without enough of this sort 
of familiarity. For instance : 

" The Saxon Chronical was the seven deadly 
sins." 

" The Saxon Cronicle was the union of seven 
Saxon kings." 

*'The Druids were poets who lived in stone 
pillars and huts." 

" Bards were like hand organ men they went 
round singing to the people who lived in the 
country." 

''The Knights of the Round Table went to 
the shrine of Bocacio." 



9^ " The Young Idea'* 

" Old English Ballards did not last long be- 
cause the tyranny and war which caused the 
people's minds to turn to love soon became sim- 
ple and was not considered to instruct the people 
so it ceased." 

*' English Literature was very slow in coming 
to England. In the Elizabethean Age chimneys 
were introduced into houses and beds. Once 
houses had chimneys and a whole was left in 
the roof." 

*' Sir Philip Sidney was tutor to queen Eliza- 
beth. His character was of the most unques- 
tionable." 

" Queen Elizabeth soon wearied on the death 
of Sydney and then soon died herself. The 
cause of her death being the execution of Syd- 
ney the thought of which she could not bear." 

" Gray used to write his poems in a diserted 
graveyard and his elegy is one of the finest pro- 
ductions of the kind which stamp the school to 
which they belong." 

"Smith was quite sarcastical and sneering in 
many of his pieces like Gulliver and the Tail of 
a Tub and Hudibras and many others of that 
style." 

"" Addison was a pretty writer. He was that 
is very genteel in his ways of writing." 

" Bacon was not much of a humerous writer. 
He wrote some on government and how to take 
care of your garden." 

*' Cowper and Burns were marked for simi- 



** The Young Idea.'' 91 

larity of style and they were both somewhat 
poor." 

''Sir Thomas More called Martyr Moore was 
noted for being quite a martyr. He wrote about 
a place he went to that never existed only for 
very good people. They were no such a place." 

" Moore has beautifully pictured in verse how 
Jeovah and his people escaped from Ferro by 
crossing a sea. He says thus sound the loud 
tymbal Jeovah has escaped from the army of 
Ferro by crossing the sea thus separating them- 
selves from Ferro and his army by the sea ; both 
men and horses and chariots of Ferro went down. 
When the tempest sounded over the sea the 
people cryed Jeovah is free." 

"The representative men of the i8th Century 
were Mrs. Shelley, Matthew Gregory Lewis and 
Mrs. Radcliffe." 

" Byron wrote Pilgrims Progres a prose theo- 
logical article." 

Yet we are told that this is the study to be 
last attempted ! Does our critic think that the 
schools exist only for the purpose of teaching 
children what they already know, or that we can 
wait until they are ready to receive what we can 
give them ? He forgets what an enormous load 
of learning we are obliged to pile upon them, 
and how short a time is allowed for the piling. 
Pope says that " half our knowledge we must 
snatch, not take," and was not Pope a wise 
man ? 



92 " The Young Idea.'' 

Our critic further says, " The tree of knowl- 
edge is indeed vast in our schools, but it is after 
all but an overgrown weed. Good masters learn 
to hang many a garland on its unsightly knots 
by the way, and to bend many of its branches 
into unnatural but more or less useful direc- 
tions." To the unprejudiced mind it might 
seem considerably less than more. 

" It is now plain to the best educationists," 
says one who ranks high among them, " that our 
own literature must be the first to awaken liter- 
ary interest and prepare the way for universal 
literature." But there is a considerable amount 
even of our own, and each day has a limited num- 
ber of hours. Let us take, — say a dozen of our 
most famous writers. Let us add to each name 
the owner's date and place of birth, his princi- 
pal characteristics, and the most important 
events of his life. Next, of course, we need an 
enumeration of the works of each writer — a 
dozen apiece will do, though three dozen would 
be a great deal better — with the plan or plot of 
each one, its particular qualities of style, and its 
moral, if it have one. These ingredients must 
be judiciously mixed, thoroughly stirred, and 
administered with a ladle, as the use of a tea- 
spoon would waste altogether too much time. 
Thus shall our pupils be educated in American 
Literature. 

" Longfellow was born in the about the i8 
century. He wrote many works in prose and 



" The Yowig Idea:' 93 

some in poetry. His principal proses are Outer 
Mare a French work and Hyperion." 

" Longfellow is the greatest poet of America 
except Tennyson. He wrote odes to a Water 
fowl about birds. There is a Longfellow day in 
our school." 

*' He was a poet of the natural very sweet and 
simple and his lines are marked with great en- 
ergy and breadth of scope. He wrote about an 
old clock on his stairs." 

" Evangeline we see her in pictures. She was 
one of Longfellows and we greatly admire her 
calm and heroic manners." 

" Irving's education unlike that of other great 
literary men was not expansive." 

" When this country was a providence of 
Great Britain and Peter Stuyvesant was Gov- 
ernor of New Netherlands there was a certain 
personage by the name of Rip Van Winkle." 

" Rip Van Winkle's wife had died from burst- 
ing a blood vessel at a peddler in a fit of pas- 
sion." 

" The only human being poor Rip Van \Vmkel 
knew when he got over his nap was his faithless 
dog who never deserted him." 

*' Irving was not quite so much of a poet as 
some other writers. All his work was prose and 
it was considered very funny even in our day. 
Irving is not living at present having died some 
time past." 

" Byrant wrote for a newspaper a good deal 



94 *' The Yoimg Idea'' 

and he wrote some other things. He wrote 
Thanotopsis about death and became very fam- 
ous suddenly and rather unexpected." 

" Bryant wrote libery of poetry and song and 
I don't remember any of his other pieces except 
about violets." 

"The death of the flowers was one of his most 
mornful poems. It is a sort of wail of sorrow." 

'' Hawthorne was a writer in the Salem custom 
house and then he wrote scarlet letter." 

" Hawthorne was sort of stuck up and wrote 
mysteriously." 

" Hawthorn wrote the story of seven fables 
and the breakfast table." 

" Holmes is a rather witty sort of a writer. 
He wrote the wreck of the Hesperus and the 
Launching of the Ship." 

" Prescott wrote Gibbons History of the 
Romans." 

'* Whittier has lived for many years in Cam- 
bridge. His most famous work begins Tear 
her tattered ensine down." 

It is true, of course, that we ourselves have, 
through long years of reading and association, 
become as familiar with these names as with 
those of our own households, and it may be a 
trifle more difficult for these younger minds to 
retain such a mass of information, falling upon 
their devoted heads somewhat in the fashion of 
a snow-slide. But are they to be left in heathen- 
ish ignorance of the literary lights of the world, 



" The Yojmg Idea:' 95 

especially of our own country and our own cen- 
tury ? 

Much of the study of English Literature is as 
sound and satisfactory as Mr. Silas Wegg's read- 
ing of " The Decline and Fall Off The Rooshan 
Empire " to Mr. and Mrs. Boffin in the Bower,— 
" going straight across country at every thing 
that came before him ; taking all the hard words, 
biographical and geographical ; getting rather 
shaken by Hadrian, Trajan, and the Antonines ; 
stumbling at Polybius (pronounced Polly 
Beeious and supposed by Mr. Boffin to be a 
Roman virgin) heavily unseated by Titus An- 
toninus Pius ; up again and galloping smoothly 
with Augustus ; getting over the ground well 
with Commodus," and some pupils might say of 
their teachers as Boffin said of his reader, " Wegg 
takes it easy, but upon my soul these are 
scarers ! I -didn't think this morning there 
were half so many scarers in print. But I'm in 
for it now ! " 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BRAINS WITHOUT BODIES. 

"We were informed tliat our poor children 
were to be taught reading, writing, and arith- 
metic. Now this school, gentlemen, teaches 



96 " The Young Idea'' 

them the contents of their own insides ! If the 
Author of the Universe had meant us to know 
what our livers are like, he would not have hid- 
den them away in security. Gentlemen, this 
flying in the face of Providence must be scotched 
and even killed ! " 

It has taken a long time to convince human 
beings that it is wise to know something about 
" the contents of their own insides." Even now 
there are many skeptics, and, even among those 
who profess to be converted, the change of heart 
is more theoretical than practical. " People are 
beginning to see that the first requisite to success 
in life is to be a good animal," says Herbert 
Spencer. It is fortunate that they have made 
even a beginning. The clearer vision will no 
doubt follow in due time. 

Aristotle laid down the injunction, " Since the 
body of men comes under our care before the 
mind, it should be attended to before it." He 
considered a commonwealth essentially defective 
if gymnastics were not an integral part of its 
code. Plato called him a cripple who cultivated 
only his mind ; he wanted the years from sev- 
enteen to twenty devoted to athletics. Juvenal 
declared, '' Our prayers should be for a sound 
mind in a healthy body." In the words of 
Montaigne, *' 'Tis not a soul, 'tis not a body that 
we are training up, but a man, and we ought not 
to divide him," and Rousseau, '' You are teaching 
science ; very good. I am dealing with the 



" The Young Idear 97 

instrument by which science is acquired. All 
who have reflected upon the mode of life among 
the ancients, attribute to gymnastic exercises 
that vigor of body and mind which so notably 
distinguished them from us moderns. Care of 
the body is the wisest lesson children are ever 
taught, but the one that is, and always will be, 
the most neglected." 

Yet many of our courses of study require in- 
struction in Physiology, and some of our pupils 
know a great deal about it. For instance : 

** The brain is the seat of conciseness." 

'' What should we do without a brane a brane is 
a very nice thing to have." 

" We know in our brain when we cut our 
finger and if we did not have one we could not 
feel the pain and it would be very bad for us." 

The brain is a bony cage. It has most work 
to do of anything." 

*' The brain is like the telegraph office, and 
the nerves are the wars which goes from the 
brain all around your body." 

" The biggest globe in the body is called your 
brain. The head is in the skull and the skull is 
the brain which protects it." 

" If the brain is hurt in any way all your body 
kinder kmks up and you have fits or convulsives 
or something and then one of these days you 
will die." 

Here, truly is *' much throwing about of 
brains," as Guildenstern declared. 



98 " The Young Idear 

Herbert Spencer also says, " Men who would 
resent as an insult any imputation of ignorance 
respecting the fabled labors of a fabled demi- 
god, show not the slightest shame in confessing 
that they do not know what are the actions of 
the spinal cord, what is the normal rate of 
pulsation, or liow the lungs are inflated." But 
their children know : 

" The spinal column is made up of little bones 
and it extends from the head to the heels." 

" The spine is trangular and situated in the 
nervous system." 

" The spinal cavity is a cord which is the 
spleen," and " The spleen is apart of the liver 
which is attached to the spine." 

This is something like what the prophet 
Ezekiel saw in his vision, ^' As if a wheel had 
been in the midst of a wheel." Concerning 
*' the rate of pulsation," ignorance of wdiich our 
philosopher deplores; 

" Our puis is in there rist an it goes 60 times a 
minit." 

*' The pulse beats for the artery," — evidently a 
sort of vicarious operation. 

" Whenever an artery is exposed the pulse can 
be felt." 

" The elasticities of the arteries is a share in 
the circulation of the blood." 

*'The pulsation of the arteries is a movement 
of the heart and throws the blood into muscular 
contraction." 



" The Yoimg Idea:' 99 

*' A man's pulse goes a great deal quicker than 
you can count. It is in your fingers when you 
feel it." 

And '■ the inflation of the lungs," — why, that 
is a subject with which they are perfectly familiar : 

"Breathing is something we can not do with- 
out. It is something we have to do all our life." 

" Breathing is a substance which we can not 
see. We may hear it in many cases." 

" If we were to live without breathing we 
could not do it. It is one of the most important 
things we have to depend on." 

" If we could not breathe we should not be 
able to live, so tlierefore we are taught to breathe 
so that there might be somebody living." 

Thus indirectly are our schools preserving the 
human race — if the children are really " taught 
to breathe." But how extensive and how profit- 
able is the teaching? Like all other instruction 
it is likely to be a little obscure to the child if 
accoQipanied by technicalities, as in the case of 

" The diapfram i^ our breath and we only 
breathe when we read." 

Still our English scientist is not satisfied : 
*' While anxious that their sons should be well 
up in the superstructures of two thousand years 
ago, they care not that they should be taught 
anything about the structure and functions of 
their own bodies ; nay, would even disapprove 
of such instruction." 

But in spite of the parents' indifference or op- 



loo " The Young Idea.'' 

position, their children do somehow manage to 
accumulate a vast amount of ignorance about 
the functions of their bodies : 

"A tendon ties the muscles to all the bones." 

*' Tendon is effected either by muscular tissue 
or by means of white firm masses of glistening 
known as fibrous tissue." 

" Ligaments is a kind of elements in which 
they used to join one joint to another when they 
are broken. They are used to connect bands or 
cords." 

" The auditorium nerves has no special sense. 
It has sonorous vibrations." 

" Triceps muscular restore to bent part to a 
straight condition those of the back, the arm. 
Abductor muscular are those which moved the 
part from the axis of the body." 

" Digestion is brought on by the lungs having 
something the matter with them." 

" Bronchitis is the organ of the body which 
warns the lungs of the presence of bad air." 

'' The liver is absorbed in the blood and we 
can feel it on the open right hand of the body." 

" The facial nerves are perforated by a long 
and torturing canal and comes from an opening 
in the ear." 

" Transfusion of blood is killing one man to 
get it into the other." 

It was Josh Billings who said, '' It is better 
not to know so many things than to know so 
many things that aint so." 



" The Young Idea." loi 

Is it possible to find a greater fallacy in our 
whole educational scheme than that the lack of 
time prevents proper attention to the physical wel- 
fare of pupils ? Yet the plea is almost universal, 
as is the neglect for which it forms the excuse. 
As well might a farmer assert that his desire for 
fine crops was a reason for neglecting the weed- 
ing and watering of his fields. 

Sir John Lubbock complains that in England 
" out of four and one-half million children less 
than twenty-five thousand were examined last 
year in any branch of science as a special study. 
Only fourteen thousand studied the laws of 
health and animal physiology." But what of 
that? Probably most of the four and one- 
half million could reduce frightful common 
fractions to utterly useless decimal ones ; tell 
all about some geographical locality nobody 
outside of the school-room ever heard of or 
wanted to know about, or parse an adverbial 
phrase expressing some metaphysical truth en- 
tirely beyond the cjomprehension of the parser. 

" The question of teaching anatomy and physi- 
ology in our public schools," declares Dr. Austin 
Flint of New York, *' is one which hardly ad- 
mits of discussion, provided these subjects can 
be taught effectively. It is an error to imagine 
that they are necessarily encumbered with tech- 
nical names and expressions," or that the teach- 
ing need result in technicalities run mad, as, 

" The tinpanum is the external ear compli- 



I02 " The You fig Idea.** 

cated by appearances of moving bones and oval 
shaped vestibule membranes." 

It is probable that as long as men have bodies 
they will also have stomachs, and very likely 
that as long as they have stomachs they will oc- 
casionally feel the need of something to fill 
them. Hunger is a third certainty which can 
be safely classed with the other two, proverbially 
" the only sure things on earth, — death and 
taxes." 

" We cook our food because their of five ways 
of cooking potatoes. We should die if we ate 
our food roar," and we might roar if we had to. 

*' The function of food is to do its proper 
work in the body. Its proper work is to well 
masticate the food and it goes through without 
dropping instead of being pushed through by 
the skin." 

" Food is digested by the action of the lungs. 
The food passes through your windpipe to the 
pores and then passes of your body by evapor- 
ation." 

*' Food is digested when we put it into our 
mouths our teeth chews it and our tongue rolls 
it down our body." 

" Food is something very good for us to take 
bone giving and heatmaking food and if we did 
not absorb our food we would have no stomach 
or degestion of the Liver and the blood corpus-, 
sels would shiver and we would be not much 
good to nobody if we did not ate." 



'' The Young Idea'' 103 

The great mass of men have already outgrown 
their love for raw food, and cooking has become 
one of the most important of our arts, while a 
first-class cook commands a larger salary than 
the president of a college. This is in accor- 
dance with the eternal fitness of things, if 
Ihe proverb is true, '* No dinner, no man." 
What are all the railroads laid and bridges 
built and Atlantic cables swung from shore to 
shore ; what are all the songs sung, sermons 
preached, and books written, but the embodiment 
of bread, — the apotheosis of beef and potato ? 
" With Stupidity and sound Digestion, man may 
front much," says poor dyspeptic Carlyle, "but 
what in these dull^ unimaginative days are the 
terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the 
Liver ? Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us 
build our strongholds." But as a man's very 
morality is often the mere effect, of which cook- 
ing is the first great cause, why are we revers- 
ing any natural order in caring for the stomach 
before we trouble ourselves about the condition 
of the soul ! Voltaire declared that the fate of 
many a nation has depeqided upon the good or 
bad digestion of its ministers, and we discover 
the fact for ourselves if we read history to any 
purpose. But we need not necessarily turn 
to history for proofs that we are what our 
food makes us ; that the kind of dinner deter- 
mines the kind of man. O Cooks of the world, 
for how muchmeanness, mischief, and misery are 



I04 " The Young Idea.'' 

some of you responsible ; how much strength of 
soul and body, how much courage, patience, 
ambition, inspiration is due to others of your 
number! With all our fine notions and aesthetic 
theories, it is less the intellectual laws of cal- 
culus than the physical laws of the kitchen that 
work for the woe or the welfare of the world. 

Maine Liquor Laws, Prohibition, and High 
License do not appear to have made any 
tremendous progress in checking the ruin 
wrought by rum ; nor can much improvement 
be expected from the new requirement of temper- 
ance training, if, as is absolutely the case in cer- 
tain schools where this is required by law, 
teachers are forbidden to use the word rum, or to 
utter one syllable outside the text-book in de- 
nunciation of drunkenness. In the words of one 
of these instructors, " I teach ' the effect of 
alcohol on the tissues.' The children don't 
recognize alcohol when they see it, smell it, or 
taste it ; it has a different name in their homes 
and in the corner grog-shop, and they have no 
more idea that such instruction has any relation 
to their drunken father's and mothers and their 
degraded homes, than they have about proto- 
plasm and primeval man." 

These are the children who are able to tell 
you all about alcohol: 

"Alcohol is a licked poisson." 

" Alcohol is a liquid poisoun." 

'' Alcohol makes the mussels grow fat." 



" The Young Idea.'' 105 

*' We should never drink alkihol because it 
bloats out our body." 

"When we drink alchihol and other things it 
makes the legs kind of twinkly." 

'* We must never eat alcoholl because then it 
eats our fissures and we become very diseased." 

*' Alcohaul will turn the skin all black and it 
cleans it if you rub it hard and dont take none 
in the inside of you." 

But perhaps even this is better than nothing, 
and it is to be hoped that training in temperance 
does, in some schools, produce better results. 
How can this distressing social problem be set- 
tled save through education ? 

" The saloon must go," says the plain-speak- 
ing School Joiirjial, " and teachers should say 
so. But some say the saloon is not arithmetic, 
grammar, history, or geography ; what business 
has it in the school-room ? It is just the place 
of all places where it ought to be discussed. If the 
men of to-day demand its life, we must train up 
the man and woman of to-morrow to demand 
its death. The school-room is the center of a 
mighty power that should be used for the regen- 
eration of the world." 

" There is no side of the intellect," says Prof. 
Huxley, " which the study of Physiology does not 
call into play ; no region of human knowledge 
into which either its roots or its branches do not 
extend ; like the Atlantic between the Old and 
New Worlds, its waves wash the two worlds of 



io6 " The Youno; Idea.'' 

matter and of mind." Neglect of this study 
causes, according to Charles Kingsley, an almost 
endless list of evils. " The very morals will suffer. 
From ill-filled lungs, which signify ill-repaired 
blood, arise year by year an amount not merely 
of disease, but of folly, temper, laziness, intem- 
perance, madness, and crime, the sum of which 
will never be known till that great day when 
men shall be called to account for all deeds done 
in the body. We must teach men that they are 
the arbiters of their own destinies and, to a fear- 
fully great degree, of their children's destinies 
after them. We must do it by teaching them 
sound practical science, the science of physi- 
ology as applied to health. So and so only can 
we check the power of degradation which I be- 
lieve to be surely going on, not merely in these 
islands, but in every civilized community in the 
world in proportion to its civilization. Teach- 
ing of this kind ought to, and will, in some more 
civilized age and country, be held a necessary 
element in the school course of every child." 

" Perhaps," says Herbert Spencer, " nothing 
will so hasten the time when body and mind will 
both be adequately cared for as the belief that 
the preservation of health is a duty. Few seem 
conscious that there is such a thing as physical 
morality." 



The Yoinig Idea^ lo? 



CHAPTER IX. 

HANDS AND HEADS. 

** It is an easy thing to be a philosopher, but it 
is hard to make it pay," says the Jour?ial of 
Education^ recognizing the truth of the words of 
Novalis, *' Philosophy will bake no bread." 
Neither will it earn the money to buy the fuel to 
feed the fire by which the bread is baked. 

The majority of the graduates of our public 
schools stand helplessly, with bewildered eyes and 
puzzled brains, upon the threshold of the world's 
great workshop, asking piteously the question, 
" Now, what shall I do to earn my living ? " and 
echo immediately and sorrowfully answers, " I'm 
sure I haven't the least idea." 

Truly, the life is more than meat, and the 
body than raiment, but no matter how much 
we may affect to despise this tenement of clay 
and its material requirements, it must be clothed, 
warmed, and nourished, if it is to retain its 
spiritual and immortal guest to whom we accord 
glory and honor. Bread and boots and blankets 
must be bought, and bought with money which 
must first be earned, and " it is always the ma- 
terial shoe which gives the hardest pinch." 

Whether or not life is worth living, is a ques- 
tion which admits of discussion, and one which 
must be settled by individual opinion. But 



io8 " The Voting Idea:' 

given existence, desirable or otherwise, it needs 
no argument to prove that there are but three 
ways of sustaining it — by working, begging, or 
stealing. 

Fifty years ago in the House of Commons, a 
member of that legislative body rose excitedly 
with these words upon his lips: ''And pray, 
what do you propose to rear your youth for ? 
Why, cotton-spinners and pin-makers, or, if you 
like, blacksmiths and mere day-laborers. These 
are the men whom you are to teach foreign lan- 
guages, mathematics, and the notation of music ! 
Was there ever anything more absurd ? It really 
seems as if God hath withdrawn all common 
sense from this house ! " 

Dr. J. H. Vincent of Chautauqua follows the 
indignant Englishman half a century later wit4i 
the words, '* If I want my boy to become a 
blacksmith I would let him go through college. 
No man has a right to be merely a blacksmith. 
He must be a man and a citizen." 

Says Ascot R. Hope, one of Great Britain's 
most prominent educators, " If you train your 
boy to be a grocer and nothing else, and if he 
turn out a bad grocer, he can not so easily take to 
any other business for which he may seem more 
fit ; but the really educated man is more likely 
to be at home in any occupation." 

One of the most far-sighted and progressive 
principals in the third city of the Union de- 
clares, " This movement for industrial education 



'' The Young I ilea ^ 109 

is right ; it commends itself to the common sense 
of thinking men ; it will grandly succeed ; it 
should find its warmest supporters among those 
who know best the deficiencies of our present 
system— the teachers. The days of fetichism of 
books and of mere scholasticism are past. It is 
coming to be recognized that the man who can 
build the house, the engine, the factory; who 
can weave the fabric of silk, or cotton, or 
wool ; who can fashion iron and steel into a 
thousand forms of use, is higher than the man 
who merely keeps the books, or chronicles the 
achievements of the hand-workers. In the days 
of general ignorance and superstition, when 
the ability to read and write made one eminent 
among his fellows, the relatively learned, too 
frequently by playing upon the fears of the ig- 
norant, acquired an ascendancy over them. This 
state of things is passing away. The light of 
truth is spreading ; its intense brightness will 
soon irradiate every question of life ; wrongs 
hoary with age shall be righted ; labor will have 
its coronation; let us hasten the day." 

Dr. G. Von Taube, of the Gramercy Park 
Training School, speaks as one having authority; 
" There is but little morality in misery, and if 
our civilization must condemn a vast number of 
our population to a lot very akin to slavery, then, 
indeed, it is a failure. Our equality is a bitter 
irony if no chance is given to our young men to do 
their best in life. Knowledge is the requirement 



" The Youn^ Idea." 



for it, and practical knowledge, too, as demanded 
in our times, and such we are in duty bound to 
give, if our democratic traditions are to be kept." 

John Morley had a word to say on this sub- 
ject in his address delivered not long ago before 
the London Society for the Extension of Uni- 
versal Teaching : " The end of education is to 
make a man,and not a cyclopedia ; a citizen, and 
not a book of elegant extracts. Manual train- 
ing is of use as an aid to intellectual activity as 
a harness in which to break the coltish mind to 
apply theory in practice. The industrial pre- 
eminence of England is at stake unless scientific, 
commercial, and technical education is pushed 
on with vigor." 

Prof. C. M. Woodward, Director of the Man- 
ual Training School of St. Louis, endorses the 
idea : " Do not forget that the pupil has hands 
as well as eyes and ears. The general introduc- 
tion into our public schools of systematic train- 
ing in the underlying principles of the handi- 
crafts, is the next great step in the development 
of our educational system. Its future is, I be- 
lieve, firmly bound up in and dependent upon 
the future of manual training." 

In an address before the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, in August, 
1877, Prof. James of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania uttered these significant words: "Yoke 
intelligence and reflection to the homely cart of 
manual labor, and the interest of intelligent and 



''''The Young Idea." in 

reflecting boys will be arrested and permanently- 
fixed. Along this line we must look for a 
gradual elevation in the social tone of our work- 
men. It will assist powerfully in developing 
intelligence and industrial ability which now 
lies dormant in thousands of our children. An 
Edison, a Roebling, a Whitney, a Morse might 
go through the whole curriculum of some of our 
best schools and find absolutely nothing to stir 
his powers. He might, and probably would be, 
ranked as a dullard." 

One is reminded of an illustration of Henry 
VVard Beecher's: " Men are often like knives 
with many blades. They know how to open one 
and only one. The rest are buried in the handle, 
and they are no better than they would have 
been if they had been made with but one blade." 

Dr. Parkhurst declares, '' Industrial ignorance 
is the mother of idleness, the grandmother of 
destitution, the great-grandmother of socialism 
and nihilistic discontent. So far as the battle 
of life is concerned, to train children's ideas 
without training their fingers, is like putting 
a regiment through musket drill ; it is healthy 
discipline and affords pleasant dress parade, but 
will avail little before the enemy, unless with all 
their other acquirements they have learned to 
shoot." 

In the Century for November, Col. Richard 
T. Auchmuty writes : '* The workmen of the 
future must learn how to work before thev seek 



112 <' The Yotmg Idea:* 

employment. All professional men do this. 
What scientific schools are to the engineer and 
architect, what the law school and the medical 
college are to the lawyer and the physician, or 
what the business college is to the clerk, 
trade schools must be to the future mechanics," 
This is merely a recognition of the fact that, 
the apprentice system having died out, something 
practical must be found to supi)ly its place and 
to accomplish the same results. We are called 
upon to adapt our schools to a new order of 
things. 

Sir John Lubbock groans : "A thousand hours 
in the most precious seed-time of life of millions 
of children spent in learning that / must follow 
e in conceive, and precede it in believe j that two 
e's must, no one knows why, come together in 
proceed and exceed, and be separated in precede 
and accede ; that uncle must be spelled with a r, 
but ankle with a k, — while lessons in health and 
thrift, sewing and cooking, which should make 
the life of the poor tolerable, and elementary 
singing and drawing which should make it pleas- 
ant, and push out lower and degrading amuse- 
ments, are in many cases almost vainly trying to 
gain admission." 

One of our most progressive teachers is respon- 
sible for this utterance : " The State carries on 
the work of instruction as a matter of policy 
and economy. The results which follow the 
vast expenditures are far from satisfactory. 



" The Young Idea." 113 

Observant men see that there is something wrong. 
They see that the children leave the schools with 
an abundance of useless lore " — (and he might 
have added that they do not retain even that 
very long), " but with a plentiful lack of useful 
knowledge." Is not this a self-evident truth? 

Says another of equal eminence : '' Ever since 
the time that illustrious American snatched the 
lightning from the clouds and made it obedient 
to his behests, there has arisen a multitude of 
discoverers and inventors who have made this 
country and this age the most noted in the 
annals of history. In this intensely practical 
age, what modifications have taken place in the 
course of study in our common schools ? We 
are still pulling to pieces the beautiful sentences 
of Milton and Shakespeare, forgetting that the 
building up process is of infinitely more value 
to the student than the pulling down of any 
structure. We still spend too much time in 
spelling words, the meaning of which children do 
not know. Industrial education does not aim at 
making mechanics of all the boys, nor seam- 
stresses and cooks of all the girls. The boy or 
girl who has the opportunity for applying the 
principles which belong to industrial education 
will not only learn that which will be useful 
during life, but will acquire will-power over 
muscle that will quicken the intellect." 

These are the plain words of an instructor of 
long experience. '' What shall we say to these 
things?" 



114 '"''The Young Idea'' 

Still another of almost equal experience adds 
his testimony : 

" Industrial education will cause fewer mis- 
takes to be made in the choice of vocations. 
The number of briefless barristers will be 
greatly reduced ; fewer disciples of Esculapius 
will deal drugs and death around the tomb. 
There will be a reduction in the ranks of those 
who pound rather than expound sacred texts. 
All this will be a gain and a glory to the State." 

Says Col. Francis W. Parker, ''Manual labor 
is the foundation of clear thinking, sound imag- 
ination, and good health. If you would develop 
morality in a child, train him to work." And Sir 
Philip Magnus, *'To assume that the best edu- 
cation can be given through the medium of 
books only, is a survival of the medievalism 
against which nearly all educational authorities 
protest." 

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia Col- 
lege, President of the New York Industrial 
Association, is one of our most cultured and 
clear-seeing educators. In an address before 
the National Education Association at Washing- 
ton, February, 1888, he said, among other 
pertinent things : " This subject is too impor- 
tant and too pressing to permit us to spend 
time in wandering off to fight duels with 
windmills. Manual training cannot be treated 
as an annex or appendix to the traditional course 
of study. It does not claim admittance as a 



" The Young Idea.'* 115 

favor, it demands it as a right. The future 
course of study will not be a Procrustean struc- 
ture, absolutely and unqualifiedly alike for all 
localities and for all schools, but it will have in 
it a principle, and that principle will be founded 
on a scientific basis ; the highest duty of the 
educator will be its application to his own par- 
ticular needs and demands." 

Teachers find that to many children nothing 
proves more discouraging than failure to realize 
that their school-work counts for something. All 
knowledge must be a sort of abstract and 
intangible possession to the child, unless he 
can in some way make practical application 
of it. The constant writing of figures and 
sentences which are as constantly rubbed out 
again, gives the child a depressing sense of doing 
a vast amount of work with nothing in the world 
to show for it. 

" Is your object to fit pupils for certain trades ? " 
asked a reporter of Prof. Leipziger, of the He- 
brew Technical 'Institute, New York. "Our 
object is to educate^'' was the emphatic answer. 
'' Hand-work cultivates observation, judgment, 
and a taste for exactness which has a final 
result in morality. If a boy parses a sentence 
incorrectly he forgets all his mistakes in a 
few minutes, but if he makes an error in 
wood-carving it annoys him every time he 
looks at it. If he likes mechanics, he must 
necessarily learn mathematics and science. 



ii6 '' The Young Idea.'* 

Even if one clings to the old idea that education 
is the gaining of knowledge, the industrial 
method is the best. Instead of trying to give a 
boy an idea of a cube by an elaborate definition 
set him to draw one or make one out of paper, 
and he'll know forevermore just what a cube is." 
Is there any terrible heresy in such doctrine as 
this? "Nine-tenths of the work done in this 
world is hand-work, but all of our effort in educa- 
tion so far has been to teach people to live with- 
out working with their hands." Oh, tremendous 
and thrilling truth, to which so many of our 
lamentable social conditions bear abundant and 
heartbreaking testimony ! 

In his address before the Industrial Education 
Association of New York, Gen. Francis A. 
Walker enunciated these stirring truths : " The 
introduction of shop work into the public system 
of education cannot fail to have a most benefi- 
cial influence in promoting a respect for labor, 
and in overcoming the false and pernicious pas- 
sion of our young people for crowding them- 
selves into overdone and underpaid depart- 
ments where they may escape manual exertion. 
Helplessness and thriftlessness recruit the ranks 
of the vicious and depraved, and mock the ef- 
forts of both philanthropy and criminal law to sup- 
press them. What may education do toward re- 
moving these twin evils of society, the source of 
poverty, degradation, and crime ? Is there hope 
through the schools ? " And we find ourselves 



" The Young Idea.'' 117 

face to face with the solemn fact that if there is 
no hope in our schools there is no hope anywhere. 
This scorn of labor is one of the greatest 
evils of our day. We are corning by degrees, 
however, to feel considerable respect for work, 
and even in some slight degree, for work 
done with the hands and in the sweat of the 
face. The beneficial and magnificent results 
which have been developed in nearly all the 
mechanical arts have compelled us in many 
cases to do homage to the skilled workman, 
though he is working for day's wages. Still we 
are a long way from that measure of respect and 
appreciation which should be accorded to all 
honest industry. We are not yet entirely be- 
yond resentment at Lincoln's answer to the 
question of the astonished foreigner, '* Do you 
black your own boots ? " " Why, yes, whose 
boots should I black ? " nor do we wonder 
at the foreigner's surprise. It has taken many 
years for us to reach a practical belief in the 
doctrine of equality taught by Robert Burns, so 
delightedly accepted in poetry, so reluctantly 
applied to life. 

The future salvation of this country is wrapped 
up in the successful solution of many great 
problems, not one of which is more important 
than that of the dignity, the value, the rights of 
labor. '' Labor is coming to the front," says 
Powderly, '' and the man in the paper cap must 
take his place in the profession "; unless we 



ii8 '' The Young Idea."' 

graciously make an entrance for him, he will 
force one for himself, perhaps by methods of 
which we cannot quite approve. The helpless 
housekeepers of the country can best tell what 
dangers threaten our national home life. For 
the simplest domestic service they must depend 
upon a horde of ignorant foreign servants, 
while our American girls, educated in our public 
schools, starve slowly in daily factories and 
nightly garrets. The false education of each 
class reacts on the other to the immense injury 
of both, giving to the student of social econ- 
omy a problem for which there can be found no 
easy solution. Yet solved it must be, and in 
some practical fashion, if our country's future 
welfare is to be in any manner dependent upon 
its social and domestic life. 

What is the reason for the existence of so 
many trade schools, art schools, cooking schools, 
and business colleges all over the country, if it 
is not because of the failure of the common 
schools to prepare our young men and women 
for the practical work of life waiting to be done, 
and which they are obliged to do in self-defense ? 
No one denies the need of thorough education 
for the brain ; but the head can not truly say to 
the hand, *' I have no need of thee." 

" I advise all parents to have their boys and 
girls taught short-hand writing and type-writing," 
said Charles Reade. " A short-hand writer who 
can type-write his notes will be safer from poverty 



" The Young Idea.'" 119 

than a great Greek scholar." But even he would 
not have said that a man would run his Reming- 
ton any less successfully for being able to read 
Aristophanes in the original. 

But the question is reasonably nsked, How, 
in the already over-crowded condition of the 
course of study, can time be found for the pro- 
posed additional work ? If, as a Brooklyn 
principal asserts, " In no work to-day is there so 
much quackery as in the so-called educational 
work of the schools, public and private alike," 
then surely the matter resolves itself into a sim- 
ple getting rid of the quackery in order to adopt 
something genuine and profitable in its place. 
This will certainly prove a lightening of the 
load instead of an addition to it. 

Professor Thomas Davidson is explicit in his 
method for securing tlie necessary time. " Let us 
do away with what is nonsensical and hurtful in 
our present courses, and plenty of time will be 
left for all the manual training that is desirable. 
Do away, for example, with a great deal of the 
arithmetic, a great deal of the formal grammar, 
the whole of the elocutionary reading, that are 
now taught. Above all, do away with the whole 
wicked system of school exhibitions, which not 
only waste valuable time, but teach so many evil 
lessons of vanity, envy, selfishness, and whose 
cheap, vulgar applause so tends to unfit young 
people for the sober, unapplauded duties of real 
life." 



The Yoims Idea 



" There is nothing so terrible," says Goethe, 
"as activity without insight." If there were 
nothing but theory on which to base these claims 
for a change in our school system, then indeed 
we might hesitate before making any attempts 
at change. But these theories have been prac- 
tically applied and tested in numerous places 
where experiments could be safely made. The 
result in every case has been successful. 

H. AV. Compton writes from the Training 
School of Toledo, Ohio: '' Boys and girls pass from 
their algebra and history to their drawing, and 
from these again to their geometry and litera- 
ture with a hearty zest for all. All the pupils 
show the greatest interest and enthusiasm in the 
work. The boys do not want any better holi- 
day than to work in the shops. The opposition 
to manual training rises largely from the lament- 
able ignorance which prevails concerning its 
aims and results. It dignifies and exalts labor, 
and teaches respect for the laboring man. It 
teaches no special trade, and yet lays the foun- 
dation for any trade and gives the youth such 
knowledge and skill that he becomes a better 
and sounder judge of men and things in what- 
ever business or profession he may engage." 
So is the tree known by its fruits, and we recog- 
nize with Whittier that — 

" On the ladder of God which upward leads 
The steps of progress are human needs." 



" The Young Idear 121 

CHAPTER X. 

*' SENATORS SWEAR." 

" If ever a country was in danger of dying of 
dyspepsia, ours is," says Dr. Parkhurst. " An 
adult foreigner is not easily masticated, sali- 
vated, and digested. Our hopes must center in 
the children. The school is the national stom- 
ach. Our public schools must be the nurseries 
of young patriots ; they are our best American- 
izing machinery." 

Says George Stuart, of the Philadelphia 
High School :'" The efficiency of the American 
public school in training for citizenship, is 
likely to be severely tested in the near future. 
Recently there has appeared in our midst 
an element peculiarly alien in race and sym- 
pathies, or revolutionary in tendencies, and 
in numbers sufficiently large to disturb the 
calm future of our social forms and the settled 
traditions of centuries. Against the subversive 
influence of this element our common school is 
a tower of strength, and civics, as a branch of 
instruction, assumes paramount importance." 

*' What is in store for the children of to-day's 
voters?" inquires Frances C. Sparhawk in Edu- 
cation. '' We have thrown open our doors to the 
world ; the world has come ; what are we going 
to do with it ? New elements of danger are to 



122 " The Young Idea." 

be met; we have formerly had to Americanize 
individuals ; now we must Americanize organi- 
zations." 

" Republics," says Senator Stewart of Nevada, 
" have seldom perished by the sword. They 
have always bred a race of warriors, willing and 
capable of vanquishing every foe except igno- 
rance among the masses. By that fatal enemy 
all the republics of ancient times were destroyed. 
The masses became incapable of conducting the 
complicated machinery of government necessary 
in a republic." If ignorance can kill our repub- 
lic as it did those of the past, there is surely 
something to fear in certain facts set forth by 
Rev. Joseph Cook : '' Of the ten million actual 
voters in the United States, two million cannot 
write their names. There are at least two mil- 
lion voters who are not classified as illiterates, 
and yet do not know enough to cast an intelli- 
gent vote. The whiskey rings own more prop- 
erty than the slave-holders ever did. It is what I 
call the grip of ruin on the throat of this nation. 
Unloose it ! Deliver America from the bondage 
of ignorance. That should be the supreme 
watchword of the hour." 

Lord Bacon declared, " There is no greater 
work for any man than the founding of states." 
But how about the work of preserving and im- 
proving those already founded ? 

" A thousand years scarce serves to form a state, 
An hour may lay it in the dust." 



" TJie Young Idea.'' 123 

Sydney Smith has said, " It would seem that 
the science of government is an unappropriated 
region in the university of knowledge," but Syd- 
ney Smith lived years before we were given an 
explanation of the fact : 

'' Tiie science of government is so very great 
of a strane on the mind that the mind of a man 
is not culpable of concieving and carrying out a 
science of government." 

Still the young minds have some ideas con- 
cerning the chief executiv^e and a certain legis- 
lative body. 

" The President is settled by a trety." 

" When the President is tired the chief justice 
shall preside." 

'' The president heads all the armys and navys 
of the United States and makes them move 
round." 

" Congress can raise money by appropriat- 
ing it." 

'' Congress shall borrow and spend all the 
money of the people." 

'* Congress has no power over any Indian 
tribes now living." 

"Congress can commit pirates to the high 
seas." 

'* Congress has power to determine what crimes 
shall be committed." 

"The duration of the Session of Congress de- 
pends upon when the President takes his pleas- 
ure and two houses cannot agree." 



124 " The Young Idear 

'' There must be three reading lessons in Con- 
gress on a Bill before it finally passes away." 

'' Treason is defied by the Constitution and 
punished by Congress." 

To fire off crackers on the Fourth of July — 
and fire a few houses at the same time ; to float 
a flag from the front window on the twenty-sec- 
ond of February, and hurrah for the regiment 
that marches through the city on Decoration 
Day, — have not the American people plenty of 
patriotism and public spirit, with speeches, con- 
flagrations, explosions, and congratulations, all 
along the line ? 

The average respectable American citizen 
believes theoretically in a republican- form of 
government, and if it were threatened would in- 
stantly cry, "The Union must and shall be pre- 
served ! " But how does he prove his devotion ? 
Doubtless, like Artemus Ward, he would willingly 
sacrifice all his wife's relations if danger threat- 
ened his beloved country ; but in many cases 
he will not take the trouble even to cast a ballot 
which might help to avert all danger. 

Plato says that the punishment which the wise 
man suffers who refuses to take part in the gov- 
ernment is to live under the government of worse 
men. But did any wise man ever so refuse, or, 
refusing, did he not fairly forfeit the claim to be 
called wise ? 

What will be the outcome — what is it already — 
of this " masterly inactivity" on the part of re- 



" The Young Idea." 125 

sponsible citizens ? Vide the official corruption 
of a body of public servants in the largest city 
in the Union, exposed, as is a hole in the ground 
when the covering stone is displaced, and re- 
vealing the crawling creatures within it trying to 
escape in every direction (scurrying to Canada, 
to England, to the grave, while a few of them 
accidentally find their way into State prisons) ; 
the capitol of the Empire State, erected a few 
years ago at a cost of seventeen millions of 
dollars, daily threatening to tumble down on 
the heads of the astute legislators, and, in the 
educational world, the College of the City of 
New York, which graduates the enormous num- 
ber of forty students a year at the slight cost of 
one hundred and forty thousand dollars, re- 
paired in 1886, and just one year later found to 
be in need of further repairs to the extent of 
one hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars. 
But why name instances of official iniquity in 
order to prove its universal existence ? There 
is no need to demonstrate that water runs down- 
hill. There is net an intelligent boy twelve 
years old in any intelligent family in the coun- 
try who does not understand, in a general way, 
at least, the sore straits into which the country 
has been drifting. 

" In that elder day 
To be a Roman was greater than a king-." 

and there was a time when to be a native of this 
" land of the free and the home of the brave " 
was not much less of a distinction. But now ? 



126 « The Young Idear 

'' ' Mamma, Mary says her father is an Irish- 
American, and she's awfully stuck up about it.' 

" ' Well ? ' 

And Gretchen says her father is a German- 
American, and she's awfully stuck up too.' 

;;'^Yes.' 

And Marie is bragging because her father 
is a French- American.' 

" ' I can't help it, dear.' 

'' * But isn't there something I can brag of? ' 

*' No, pet ; you are only an American.' " 

Considerable instruction in Civil Government 
is already given in our schools, this particular 
tree of knowledge occasionally bearing most 
astonishing fruit: 

" We have not had any good government since 
the declaration of independence." 

"The Revolutionary War was begun in 1775, 
and has continued all this time." 

'' No free government can exist unless its 
powers are discharged on earth." 

"When territory is found uninhabited by new 
settlements, you take the laws of the country"; 
but not a word of explanation is offered as to 
what you are expected to do with them. 

" The Federal government grew out of several 
States. It has three states. Legislature, execu- 
tive, and judicial." 

" The Constitution should be the law of the 
country and be violated." 

" No soldier shall be quartered anywhere in 



" The Young Hear 127 

the United States without the consent of the 
owner." 

*' No person shall be convinced of treason 
unless he has done it to two witnesses in open 
court." 

" The presedent cannot draw any salary 
duri'ng any term of office." 

" Electors are chosen by people." 

" Electors meet to cast their votes at each 
place in the State that is the capital of the legis- 
lature." 

But the "qualifications to be a president " are 
still more surprising : 

" The constitution is 35 years, he shall be 
a natural born citizen of the United States, he 
shall have been president of the United States 
fourteen years prior to taking a seat." 

" An absolute monarch makes the caprice of 
his own will but a democrat government is when 
the democrats are a select body of men and 
there elected by the people and use their voices 
in making the laws." 

" In nearly all the states judicial officers should 
be impeached." Perhaps in the words of Capt. 
Cuttle, " The bearing of this obserwation lies in 
the application of it." 

" The House of Representatives shall have sole 
power of impeaching a speaker." 

" On taking their seats Senators and Repre- 
sentatives swear." 

"' No person shall be a Senator who has not 



128 " The Yoimg IdeaT 

attained the age of 9 years and been a resident 
of the country 30 years." 

*' If the President dies the Vice President has 
got to devolve his duties," and 

" The Vice President shall be President of 
the Senate and be equally divided," after which 
operation it is possible, to quote Sam Weller, 
" His most formiliar friends voodn't know him." 

This sort of instruction probably does no 
harm, though it reminds one of the remark made 
by the blacksmith who unresistingly bore the 
chastisement inflicted by his wife, *' It don't hurt 
me none, and it does her a heap o' good." Some- 
body, no doubt, feels more comfortable to know 
that political education is not entirely neglected 
by the system ; but well as it may be attended to, 
is there not a better way still, — the preaching 
of a living gospel instead of the repetition of 
dead words ? Character, honesty, moral princi- 
ple, recognition of duty, a sense of responsibil- 
ity, all the qualities of manhood most needed in 
our electors, senators, and public officers, — why 
is not the development of an appreciation for 
these things quite as profitable as definitions and 
technicalities, which to the children learning 
them are again nothing but " words, words, 
words "? There is great danger ahead if there 
is truth in this eloquent disquisition of a young 
writer on the subject of our national life : 

"And to-day we sail beneath the clear sky of 
concord hurled the crators upon a creasted wave 



*' The Young Idea.'* 129 

of life without a compass or rudder for whenever 
the pillars which support a national edifice of its 
massive columns are undermined and prostrated 
the whole fabric of national freedom will be 
crushed in ruin." 

One hope only is held out to us ; " The 
United States shall not be put into slavery or 
subject to its jurisdiction." 

It was Garfield who said," Our national safety 
demands that the fountains of political power 
shall be made pure by intelligence and kept pure 
by vigilance." Evidently there is something to 
be done, and there must be found some way of 
doing it if the Republic upon which we pride our- 
selves is to remain a thing to be proud of. This 
fact is forced upon us in many ways, but most 
painfully of all in the statement made by a 
young student of political economy: "So reck- 
less has our Legislator become that our political 
institutions will soon be all crumbs." 

"Many people," writes a wise student of 
political economy, " are not conscious of receiving 
benefits from the existence of government. In 
orderly communities the influence of government 
is like that of the atmosphere, all embracing, but 
silent. This in part explains the smuggling and 
tax dodging by respectable people. In this 
popular ignorance lies the necessity for school 
instruction. All teaching of civics must found 
itself upon the necessity of government and the 
essential beneficence of its operations." 



130 " The Young Idea.'' 

Says Prof. Charles D. Marx of Cornell Uni- 
versity, " For the great questions of national life 
staring us in the face to-day, we find no answers 
in antiquity. Compulsory education, care of 
commerce and industry, agriculture and internal 
communication, colonial and social politics — 
these are definitions and problems which have 
sprouted in the soil of modern times." 

"What then," asks Thomas P. Ballard of 
Ohio, " is to be the permanent and practical re- 
lation of our common schools to the civil service 
of the future ? It is plain that the function of 
the teacher in the eye of the State must be direct- 
ed to laying the foundations for citizenship, a 
training broad enough to include the physique, 
the intellect, the entire character of the people. 
The momentous question is how to train the 
American citizen for the great duties and proba- 
bilities of the future. The State, through the 
schools, must do its utmost. The entire work of 
education must converge to this great end. 
Civil service reform should pre-eminently com- 
mand the support of our school men." 

In the words of Prof. Hewitt of Cornell Uni- 
versity, ''When the system of our public service 
shall be perfected so that the people demand 
special fitness in their public servants, we shall 
see public employment an honorable ambition, 
and education, both primary and advanced, re- 
cognizing a new province of work in preparing 
students for the public service." In that happy 
day may come to pass what is written. 



" The Young Idea^ 131 

** Tenure of office depends on everybody's 
good behavior." 

In our day General Grant has said, " The 
free school is the promoter of that intelligence 
which is to preserve us a free nation," and Hon. 
George S. Boutwell, *' Liberty can never die in 
the presence of a people universally and thor- 
oughly educated." Yet between 1870 and 18S0 
there was an increase of two million illiterates 
in this country, while it is estimated that by 
June, 1888, the money lying idle in the Treasury 
of the United States will reach the sum of one 
hundred and forty million dollars. 

'^ Only great objects can worthily occupy a 
boy's heart," says the great Richter, '' and what 
except knowledge can fill it better than his love 
of country? This holy flame should be fanned 
in all schools." 

" But what can we do with these great subjects 
in the primary school ? " asks one of our Massa- 
chusetts educators. "Everything! Born under 
the American flag, if by the age of ten the child's 
eye has not learned to kindle and his heart to 
thrill at the sight of the stars and stripes there 
is little hope of patriotism." 

Prof. Wm. T. Harris asserts : "The conscious- 
ness of belonging to a nation acts and reacts 
constantly on one's character. To belong to a 
noble nation like Great Britain or the United 
States strengthens the spiritual backbone. The 
English backbone is eight hundred years long 



132 " The Young Idea'' 

and thick in proportion. To be a Roman citizen 
in the time of the Caesars, — we know what that 
meant." 

Says Prof. Vose, apropos of the study of civics 
in our schools : " The signs of the times are un- 
mistakable. The work may go hard for awhile 
and we may have to employ some crude alterna- 
tives for true methods. But true methods 
will come in due time"; for, as Carlyle declares, 
** as soon as men get to discern the importance of 
a thing, they do infallibly set about arranging, 
facilitating, forwarding it, and rest not till in 
some approximate degree they have accom- 
plished it." 



CHAPTER XL 



" I AiNT goin' to be no Pesky Palion I don't 
care what he says." 

" I'd rather be a Piscopalyan than a shoutin' 
Methodis, any how." 

"Who's said anything about shoutin' Metho- 
dis ?" 

" My mother says your mother's one. She 
says they jest groan an' holler an' scream down 
to your church." 

** Well, my father says your father's nothin' 



" The Young Idea'' 133 

but a scaly Demercrat, an' that's a good deal 
wuss than a Methodis, anyhow." 

Here a bigger boy interfered to prevent blows 
from the clenched fists: 

" You better look out, you two. Whadder 
you know about it ? Better go off and play 
marbles." 

This short but significant conversation was the 
result of a little " religious training," which the 
" high church" principal had seen fit to give the 
pupils one Friday afternoon. The relative 
claims of creeds is seldom a subject of contro- 
versy among twelve-year-old schoolboys, but 
similar comparisons have characterized every 
phase of religious agitation since men grew wise 
enough to quarrel with their brains as well as 
with their clubs. 

Nearly three years ago President Seelye of 
Amherst College gave a fresh impetus to the 
discussion of religious education by his question 
in the Forum, "^Is there any reason why we 
should teach the life of Julius Caesar in our schools 
and not the life of Jesus Christ ?" It was the 
cause of much spirited controversy which waxes 
warmer every day, and in the same publication 
for January, 1888, Rev. Minot J. Savage of Bos- 
ton truly says, *' Circumstances are just now 
pushing the moral and religious side of the 
school question to the front, and it must soon 
be dealt with in some practical way." 

Dr. Seelye claims that " the State should pro- 



134 " The Young Idea.'' 

vide religious instruction for its own preserva- 
tion." Dr. Savage replies: "It is none of the 
State's business to establish an insurance bureau 
for the safety of souls after they have passed 
beyond the limits of the State's jurisdiction. 
The State is vitally interested in the morality of 
its citizens, but as a State it can have no interest 
whatever in the question as to what their relig- 
ion is or whether they have any at all. There 
is even a touch of the absurd in a man's asking a 
share of the public money to pay for the work of 
saving his child's soul in some other world." 

Rev. Edward L. Neill said recently before the 
Minnesota State Teachers' Association, '' Schools 
are not intended to teach religion. The common 
schools have nothing to do with the other world 
or in preparing the scholars for heaven." Dr. Nor- 
man Macleod declares with unmistakable empha- 
sis, " The longer I live the more am I convinced 
that the more perfect the government, the less 
it should interfere with religion. If men won't 
do right because it is right, what is the good of 
it ? Give me freedom with all its risks." 

Thus radically do individuals — men eminent 
for their intellectual ability and moral character. 
Christian ministers even, — differ concerning this 
latter-day problem. 

Some one has answered the famous question 
asked by Dr. Seelye by saying that there could 
be no possible objection to teaching the life of 
Jesus Christ as well as that of Julius C^sar, pro- 



" The Young Idea'' 135 

vided it could be taught in the same way. But 
it is just here that the difficulty arises. The 
insiant that the divinity of Christ is asserted by 
his followers, a host of the " unregenerate," as 
the word is theologically used, arise to combat 
the notion, and trouble promptly begins. 

The philosopher Kant considered morality and 
religion as identical, and the evangelical church 
accepts his decision. But setting aside all theo- 
logical and technical terms, all shades of doctrine, 
all limitations of creeds and denominations, we 
must concede that whether or not we can have 
morality without religion, it is very sure that we 
can have no religion without morality, any more 
than we can have a train of cars without a railroad. 

But to quote again from Dr. Savage, ''If reli- 
gion is absolutely essential to morality, we cannot 
leave the matter all in the air. We must go on 
and ask, what religion ? — whose religion ? Are 
not justice and fair play not only qualities of all 
true Americans, but some small part at least of 
all decent religions ? There are moral men in 
all religions, and with no religion, — as that word 
is commonly used." 

Sure enough, what religion, whose religion ? 
With representative men of every denomination 
setting forth, as they have lately done in the 
pages of the North American Review, the rea- 
sons for their belief, who among us dares to 
arrogate to himself the right to dictate concern- 
ing the faith or practice of his fellows? 



136 ** The Young Idear 

In a fine article in the Atlantic Monthly for 
May, 1887, George Frederick Parsons thus 
writes, '' Everywhere the influence of the spirit- 
ual upon life is declining, and this notwithstand- 
ing some appearance to the contrary. Intellect- 
ual assent to doctrines never translated into 
practice, has indeed been the world's favorite 
method of evading its higher duties and obliga- 
tions in all times." 

Nearly forty years before, Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son said substantially the same thing : '* The 
moral influence of the intellect is wanting. We 
hearken in vain for any profound voice speaking 
to the American heart, cheering timid men, ani- 
mating the youth, consoling the defeated, and in- 
telligently announcing duties which clothe life 
with joy, and endear the face of land and sea to 
men." 

Prof. Charles E. Lowrey thus Avrites in Educa- 
tion for March 1888 : " A learned divine of na- 
tional reputation delivered a Thanksgiving ad- 
dress in one of the great educational centers of 
our country. He speaks not of the Mayflower 
nor boasts of our national prosperity. In fact 
the venerable seer breathes not a word of thank- 
fulness, for he sees no evidence of divine pres- 
ence in the signs of the times. The condemna- 
tion of other republics is upon ours. To the 
survivor of the pristine virtues of our sires, society 
has become a troubled sea." 

It is not a pessimistic, but a purely practical 



" The Young Idea:' 137 

view of the situation which leads every thinking 
mind to see and realize the danger threatening 
character in the unsettling of religious beliefs, 
independence of thought and action, and above 
all in the making haste to be rich characteristic 
of our age and country. When men boldly 
assert, without shame, or risk of contradiction, 
that " the best liar makes the best tradesman," 
and that "no successful business can be carried 
on without cheating," is it not high time to con- 
sider the present condition and the future out- 
look of our social and business life? 

There can be no difference of opinion as to 
whether or not our young people should be 
instructed in righteousness, — the "right-doing," 
about which all men agree, whatever " the 
difference in the special hue of truth they look 
at through their human prisms." Socrates with 
his marvellous logic said virtue consisted in 
knowledge. To do right was the only road to 
happiness, and as every man sought to be happy, 
vice could arise only from ignorance, or mistake 
as to the means. What is the honorable and 
the base ? What is the just and the unjust ? 
he questioned. Men that knew these matters 
he accounted good and honorable ; men that 
were ignorant of them he assimilated to slaves. 
The great philosopher even anticipated the con- 
troversy of our day concerning religious teach- 
ing. " Do these inquirers," he sharply asks, 
" think that they already know human affairs 



138 *' The Young Idea:' 

well enough that they thus begin to meddle 
with divine ? " 

" The foundation of culture is the moral senti- 
ment," declares Emerson, as Montaigne has 
asserted, " The advantages of study are to 
make us wiser and better." 

" Knowledge is always power, but it is not 
always beneficent power," writes Mrs. Horace 
Mann. *' It is a well-known fact that some of 
the greatest criminals in society have been mtn 
of ability and knowledge. These divorced from 
conscience made them only the more powerful 
for evil." 

Says John Stuart Mill : *' Education has for 
its object, besides calling forth the greatest pos- 
sible quantity of intellectual power, to inspire 
the intensest love of truth." 

" It is not what the best men do, but what 
they are, that constitutes their truest benefactions 
to their fellow-men," is a remark of the Rev. 
Phillips Brooks. 

Bishop Huntington declares : '' Moral judg- 
ment, conscience, and will are quite as valuable 
as apprehension, acquisition, and memory. 
Where they dwindle or are overshadowed it is 
not only the symmetry of a complete individual 
manhood that must suffer ; society will be dis- 
ordered." 

Says Prof. Bain: '' The difficulties of moral 
teaching exceed in every way difficulties of 
intellectual teaching. The method is ham- 



*' TJie Young Idea^ 139 

pered by so many conditions that it barely ad- 
mits of precise statement or demonstration, 
Morality is in the situation of the mother tongue. 
— it does not depend solely on the school teach- 
ing or on any one source ; it is imbibed from 
innumerable sources, and the school does not 
rank even as one of the chief." This is what 
Emerson means when he says, " You send your 
child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the school- 
boys who educate him. You send him to the 
Latin class, but much of his tuition comes, on 
his way to school, from the shop windows," and 
Jean Paul declares that " no man can take a 
walk without bringing home an influence on his 
eternity." 

The question as to how morals should be 
taught in the schoolroom, naturally follows the 
admission that it is necessary that they should 
be taught. Fortunately it is just now a matter 
which is receiving the attention of some of our 
most logical and clear-headed thinkers, and 
before long a satisfactory solution may be given. 
Notwithstanding the statement of Aristotle, 
" Only when the mind has become noble and in- 
clined to goodness can instruction in morality 
be given with advantage," we know that much 
indirect teaching is necessary in order to make 
the mind incline to goodness. The formal teach- 
ing of morality, recognized under the technical 
name of Ethics, will naturally be deferred until 
its proper season. 



140 " The Young Idea'' 

For years there has been much discussion 
concerning the reading of the Bible in the 
public schools. To paraphrase the incisive words 
of President Seelye, *' Is there any reason why 
we should read Bacon or Byron in our schools 
and not the Bible ?" There can be no possible 
objection to reading the Bible as well as Bacon 
and Byron, provided it could be read in the 
same way. As the life of Christ is an inspiring 
example of unselfishness, manliness, and devo- 
tion to the highest ideals, full of all things 
pure, lovely, and of good report, so the 
history, the poetry, the moral and dramatic 
element found so largely in the Bible make the 
book one of our literary treasures with which 
even the skeptic and the scoffer might be loth 
to part. There is no reason why we may not 
tell children the qualities of one of the noblest 
natures ever embodied in human form, or read 
to them the grandest poetry and soundest phi- 
losophy of which the human intellect is capable. 

In some quarters a compromise has been 
affected, — the spirit of the reading has been 
given up while the letter has been kept. Judge 
Noah Davis calls reading without comment " hori- 
zontal reduction," and "a concession that is a 
confession." 

But is not the reading of the Bible without 
comment better than no reading at all, provided 
judgment is used in the selections? It can 
without question aid in moral and literary edu- 



" The Young I dear Ht 

cation, and can be profitably used in connection 
with the teaching of ancient geography and 
history. If it cannot be read without additional 
comment, should it be read at all ? 

It is assumed that some teachers, to whom 
the book is nothing less than a divine revelation, 
feel unable and unwilling to make only this 
utilitarian use of it. Let such heed the words 
of Oliver Wendell Holmes and deny the truth 
of them if they can. " If a human soul is neces- 
sarily to be trained up in the faith of those from 
whom it inherits its body " (or from those from 
whom it receives its education) '' why, there is the 
end of all reason. If, sooner or later, every soul is 
to look for the truth with its own eyes, the first 
thing is to recognize that no presumption in 
favor of any particular belief arises from the 
fact of our inheriting it." 

We must endure narrowness, intolerance, big- 
otry in the pulpit, where we expect more or less 
of it, — at any rate where we get it, whether we 
expect it or not ; in law, where unprincipled 
practitioners can' be hired to advocate any 
cause regardless of its character; in medicine, 
where some physicians prefer to kill a patient 
by the treatment of a particular school, rather 
than cure him by the method of any other ; 
but let us in the name of humanity banish it for- 
ever from the profession of teaching. The teacher 
trains the future ministers, lawyers, and doctors, 
as well as their parishioners, clients, and patients.^ 



142 ** The Young I dear 

By virtue of his office he should be the broadest- 
minded man under the whole heavens. If he is 
not, wherein lies our hope for the future ? 

It is not only in the reading of the Bible 
but in the teaching of history, that cer- 
tain teachers are tempted, almost beyond what 
they can bear, to enforce particular dogmas. 
The study of history should in some respects be 
conducted as carefully as Scripture readings. 
The teaching can easily be made to converge to 
particular theological and political points, dear 
to the heart of the instructor, profoundly be- 
lieved in by him, and, in some cases, taught with 
the same conscientiousness as led Saul to per- 
secute the Christians. But it is certainly incum- 
bent upon him to experience a change of heart 
in this direction with as little delay as possible. 

As says Superintendent A. P. Marble of Wor- 
cester, Mass. : " To enforce through the text- 
books and the teachers the teaching of opinions 
held by the majority, is a kind of oppression of 
the minority. The object of the school is edu- 
cation, not the promulgation of any one set of 
opinions ; the development of the powers, and 
not storing pupil's minds with the opinions and 
thoughts of older people." 

Wm. Hawley Smith of Peoria, 111., the author 
of that most entertaining and instructive book, 
''The Evolution of Dodd," thus writes : 

" In the evolution of character in these last 
days, the public school has come to be a most 



" The Young Idear 143 

important factor. To it has been assigned a 
task equal to, if not exceeding, that of any other 
agency that has to deal with human nature. It 
is more important than can be set forth that it 
do its work well. It is not so doing now, how- 
ever, to nearly the extent of which it is capable. 
Too much it has become a mere machine, a 
mill for grinding out graduates. As such, it is 
unworthy its high estate. As such, it now ex- 
ists in a multitude of cases. As such, it should 
no longer be tolerated. From such a condition 
it must be redeemed. The system has largely 
lost sight of the grandest thing in all the world, 
namely, the individual soul. In addressing 
itself to humanity collectively, as a herd, it 
makes a fatal mistake, one that must be cor- 
rected and that speedily. Characters cannot be 
manufactured like pins, by the million, neither 
can salvation be handled in job lots. 

No teacher can leave moral training out of 
any course of study. The very atmosphere of 
the school-room is charged with influences for 
either good or evil, while every word and act of 
the teacher has its weight on either one side or 
the other. Nor need he be troubled as to how 
much moral teaching he shall do. The amount 
can be limited only by his opportunity, and, in 
some cases, by the amount of his courage. For, 
as truly in this nineteenth century as in the 
historic Dark Ages of the world, are men made 
martyrs to their principles when they dare to 



144 *' The Yoinicr Idea 



assert them and to live up to them in the face 
of social opposition. One case will serve for 
illustration. 

A young man in one of the Middle States had 
been employed but a short time in a certain 
school when he was called upon by some suspi- 
cious members of the committee for the purpose 
of further examination as to his moral qualifica- 
tions. A long and excited conversation was 
ended by the young man, who said, "Gentle- 
men, it is useless for you to argue these matters, 
and unbecoming in me to do so. Allow me, 
instead, to state to you in writing what I call 
my creed, and then decide at your next meeting 
whether you wish me to continue my work 
among you." The proposition was accepted 
and the communication Avas looked for with 
interest. It ran thus: " I believe with Froebel 
that there is a divinity in every little child. I 
venerate that incarnation of the Deity. I try to 
teach my pupils, by precept and example, to do 
right because it is right, to show them why it is 
wrong to quarrel, tell tales, lie, steal, cheat, or 
swear. I do all in my power to make them 
abhor tobacco and all intoxicating drinks. I 
will never use my influence for any political 
party or religious creed, while I try to make 
them familiar with the fundamental princi- 
ples of all morality and good government." 
The document settled his fate, as he had a 
reason to fear it would. By a vote of the 



*' The Young Idear 145 

majority of the Board of Trustees, all church 
members, and two of them receiving enormous 
rents from popular drinking-saloons, it was deci- 
ded that the young man was unfit to retain his 
position, and his resignation was accordingly 
requested. 



CHAPTER XII. 

GREEN APPLES AND GOOSEBERRIES. 

" Composition is writing down something 
you've made up in your own head." There is 
no fault to be found with this definition until it 
is extended to the process of writing out some- 
thing that originated in the head of somebody 
else. 

The editor of a magazine not long ago re- 
ceived this note : " Dear Sir, The enclosed 
poem is original in me and I didn't have any 
help in writing it out. There is more where this 
come from if 1 had an inducement to think them 
up. You may say ' original ' at the top of this 
poem for every word is by the author." 

The power to express one's ideas is most 
desirable, and for such work only two simple 
things are needed — ideas, and the skill to clothe 
them in words. But first, the ideas. The pro- 
cess is not materially different from that of 
cooking the hare, — first catch your hare. 



146 *' TJie Young Idea." 

And while you are about it, perhaps it is well to 
make sure that the animal is your property and 
not your neighbor's. 

Nothing in our schools is more desirable than 
composition work, if — Ah, that '*if"! ''Much 
virtue in an If," says Touchstone. 

The development of the child's mind may be 
fairly supposed to bear some relation to the 
growth of his body. His father's boots may fit 
him one of these days, though they will trip him 
up now if he tries to walk in them. His own 
small shoes serve him perfectly for the present. 
His ideas are in proportion, very good what 
there are of them, and a good many of them, 
considering the short time he has lived. 

He is familiar, for instance, with his finger- 
nails ; he has seen his father using things of the 
same name in putting down the sitting-room 
carpet ; once he trod Avith his little bare foot on 
an article of that sort, and received a lively im- 
pression of its size, shape, and strength. In 
brief, he has acquired ideas on nails. They are 
few in number, limited in range, lacking the 
broad horizon of the mature essayist, but they 
are his own as truly as are the fingers upon his 
hand. Consequently he is qualified to write a 
composition 

'' On Nails. 

" Nails are made of iron nails are of four kinds 
Nails that you hammer with finger nails toe 
nails door nails and tacks." 



" The Young Idea." i47 

He comprehends the word " parents " after his 
brain has appropriated the definition, in the 
same way as his stomach appropriated the bread 
which he ate for breakfast. He is then able to 
write another one 

" On Parents. 

"Parents are of two kinds male and female. 
What should we do without parents ? " 

This production has at least the brevity which 
is " the soul of wit," even if the wit itself is lack- 
ing. Possibly a realizing sense of what such a 
deprivation might be, froze the genial current 
in the soul of the young writer, and prevented 
him from elaborating the theme. 

There is a certain flavor of the Sunday-school 
in the next production, but there is no reason why 
the child's religious and secular education should 
not harmonize. There is often great complaint 
when they fail to do so. The metaphor slips 
gracefully into the literary work 

" On Water. 
" Water is hard water soft water and the water 
of life and soft water has rigglers in it." 

His elucidation of another subject shows hon- 
est thought and observation, so far as his oppor- 
tunities have permitted. He writes 

'* On Cows. 
*' Cows are of two kinds good Cows and bad 
Cows and red Cows. I dont like the Cows that 



14^ '' The Young IdeaT 

hook you some do Cows is bigger than Cats and 
Dogs and Carfs and as l^ig as Horses some of 
them are Cow giv us nice Milk the Milk Man 
Carres Somthing round in tin Cans and sells it." 

This composition is not beyond criticism in 
one or two minor points. It is not quite clear as 
to which class of cows the red cows belong, nor 
whether some cows hook you, or some folks like 
cows of that kind. The rather sudden depar- 
ture from the main topic may be regarded as a 
mere pleasantry, or it may show that the small 
mind is enlarging, taking the first step on the 
analytical road, reasoning from cause to effect, 
from the concrete to the abstract, from the 
known to the unknown — at least as regards the 
contents of the cans. 

He writes of 

" The Schoolroom. 

" My schoolroom has 6 Winders and 12 Pains 
of Glas in a Winder. That makes 72. Its a 
pleasant room only My Mother she Maid me a 
Pare of Pance and she Maid them to Tite and 
John O'Neill hes laffin at me and Teacher a 
Botons flew off and please may I go home rite 
quick." 

This is no plagiarism, neither is it a translation 
from any of the old Italian poets. It is straight- 
forward, honest, mental work, containing not 
even a quotation, unless we except the mathe- 
matical statement for which due credit must be 



" The Young Idea:' I49 

given to the multiplication table. To be sure, it 
has small mechanical errors in orthography and 
capitalization, as well as a somewhat faulty rhe- 
torical style. But time can mend all that, per- 
haps even better than his miscalculating mother 
can mend the " Pance." 

This same element of stanch honesty is par- 
ticularly striking in the statement concerning 

" Walking. 

" My favorite walk is when I do not have far 
to go for it." 

This bears the unmistakable stamp of origin- 
ality, for what can sound more familiar to the 
teacher's ear than the spontaneous "is when"? 
" A noun is when — " " Addition is when — " 
'* A figure of speech is when — " 

The information imparted in the following is 
a little too vague to be valuable: 

'' Cricket. 
" The game of cricket consists of six stumps 
two bats and a ball. Nor must we omit the balls 
which are four in number." 

The writer is more sinned against than sin- 
ning, when on being assigned an abstract theme 
fit only for a Shelley or an Emerson, he thus dis- 
courses on 

''Beauty. 

" Beauty is something we see sometimes pretty 



15° *' The Young Idea.'' 

often and then again sometimes there isent a 
great deal of it. Some dogs are called a beauty. 
A man who comes to our house Sunday nights 
says my sisters a beauty but he don't know how 
she makes faces beliind pars back wen he said 
no you sharnt have a seelskin sack this winter. 
And I dont know any more on Beauty." 

The work of an Indian pupil in tlie school at 
Hampton, Virginia, is most refreshing from its 
evident genuineness as well as the imagination 
displayed. Like Sam Weller's valentine it might 
be said to be 'Sverging on the poetical." 

'' One day, bright day, and the little bird 
happy and stood on a log and sang all day long. 
That bird doesn't know anything about cat. She 
thinks nobody is near to her. But behind the 
near log one sly cat is watching, She want to eat 
for supper, and she thinks about stealing all the 
time. The old cat came very slow, and by and 
by she go after the little bird, but she does not 
see him and sang loud again. She sang just like 
this. I always try to do what is right. When 
I ever died I go to heaven. That bird said these 
all words and I shall not forget the bird what it 
said, and these all Avords it said and after two or 
three minutes go died. That cat jumped and 
catch and kill, eat all up except little things from 
bird, wings, legs or skin, and that bird is glad to 
die because she is very good bird. That little 
bird has last time sang, and very happy was that 
little bird after that." 



" The Young I dear 151 

Equally creditable is one by a German pupil 
after tliree weeks' residence in this country: 

"The tree is a used thing for us. He is good 
for us in the summer when the sun shines. A 
tree has much branch. The tree gives us in 
sumuier so much fruit. He gives us appels, 
pears, plums. We calls the tree like the fruit. 
On a tree where grow appels we said, it is an 
appel tree, and on the tree where grow pear, we 
said it is an pear tree. We have in our garden 
two appel, two pear and one plums tree. My 
mother make pie of them. In the tree are so 
much bird that sing. We must be'kind to God 
that he gave us the tree." 

It is certainly easier to go to work with our 
material already in our hands, than to be obliged 
to manufacture it before we can use it. If chil- 
dren are not sufificiently advanced to evolve 
their own ideas, and need, as they certainly do, 
practice in expression, why should not the ideas 
be generously given them and their work thereby 
limited to what j;hey are able to do ? 

All children know what a hot summer day 
is, and of late years even city children are ac- 
quainted with our imported pest known as "a 
sparrow." It cannot, therefore, be difficult for 
any one to understand this little story as it is 
read aloud : 

" On a hot summer day, some little fat sparrows 
Thought 'twould be cooling to fly fast as arrows 
Over the wall to a nice shady nook 
And take a fresh bath in the clear flowing brook. 



t52 '' llie Young Idear 

But they splashed and they chirped and made such a 

commotion, 
That they turned the clear brook to a real little ocean ; 
And the two little sisters who'd watched them at play 
Laughed out then so gayly, it scared them away." 

This material is " worked up " as follows : 

*' It was hot one day in the summer and sum 
little sparrers thout it would be nice an cool to fly 
into a Brooke an they flied in an it was over a Wall 
an they made a good deal of nose a chirpering 
an they took a barth an the little Brooke run into 
the osan an the little girls were so Scared they 
larfed." 

Here is more trouble with orthography, but as 
this exercise is merely in expression of ideas, one 
can make due allowance. In Prof, Bain's words, 
*' After the very best classification the attainment 
of English spelling is a work of long time and 
detail, the result of combined reading, writing 
from dictation, and extensive practice under cor- 
rection." The spelling of the English language 
was not settled in a day, though we are some- 
times surprised that children do not learn it in a 
week or two. As regards the literary merit of 
the tiny story, what fault can be found with it ? 
— setting aside the singular psychological effect 
stated in the last words, the result of a slight 
misunderstanding concerning the relation of the 
''scare" to the 'Maugh." 

But when, instead of placing before the child 
such simple mental diet, he is set to masticate 



'' The Young Idea^ i53 

tremendous moutbfuls of the rich and solid 
fare of ** Festus," one stands appalled at the 
digestive process : 

"We live in deeds, )iot years ; in thoughts, not breaths; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by hearL-throbs. He most lives 
Who thinks most, feels the nol)K-st, acts the best ; 
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest, 
Lives in one hour more than in years do some 
Whose fat blood sleeps, as it slips along their veins. 
Life is but a means unto an end ; that end, 
Beginning, mean, and end of all things, — God, 
The dead have all the glory of the world." 

" Digestion is simulating your food," states a 
pupil. " Digestion is disintregrating all the 
things you eat if you eat anything," says another. 
There is evident " disintregration " here. 

" We are alive when we do something and not 
just count the years when we are alive. "W^e 
must think and not breathe feelings are not like 
the figures on a clock. We ought to try to feel 
our heartbeats. He has the most lives who thinks 
the most, lives as noble as he can and acts the 
best he knows how to. He who has the quickest 
heart has the longest life. In one hour he can 
live a great deal longer than some who are fat 
and when the blood sleeps instead of slipping 
through the veins life means that everything has 
an end the end and the beginning means that all 
things are God and the dead people have all the 
glory there is." 

Says wise old Roger Ascham, *' There is a 



154 " The Young Idea'' 

kind of Paraphrase which may be used without 
hurt to moch proffet." (Evidently this is not 
the kind.) Again, " The scholer shall winne 
nothing by Paraphrase onelie to choose worse 
words, to gather up faultes which hardlie will be 
left of againe." This result is a very natural 
one, but, " Paraphrase has, nevertheless, a good 
place in learning, but not, in myne opinion for 
any scholer, but is onelie to be left to a perfite 
Master." 

The evolution of a composition from literary 
protoplasm, the process of secretion, nutrition 
and growth, when carried on with the aid of a 
teacher, is a most curious and interesting oper- 
ation, though its value is largely dependent 
upon circumstances. Some persons are even 
rash enough to assert that it has no value under 
any circumstances. 

Given a subject, the pupil sets conscientiously 
to work. 

" Better be Trampled in the Dust than Tram- 
ple on a Fellow-Creature." 

'* We ought all to follow the Golden Rule. 
We do not want any one to take advantage of us 
and we ought to be extremely careful how we 
take advantage of them. We ought to do unto 
others as ye would that they should do unto you. 
It is very easy for some people to trample others 
in the dust, though everybody will refrain from 
doing it with a kind heart. Every one should 
remember that they are brothers and that God 



" The Youncr Idea:' I55 

is their Father. Then we shall all be just to our 
fellow-creatures." 

The subject does not prove a particularly sug- 
gestive one to the young mind. The owner of the 
mind has never been trampled either in literal 
or metaphorical dust, nor has she ever felt the 
slightest desire to serve in that disagreeable 
fashion any member of the human family. Evi- 
dently she cannot follow the direction, '' Look 
in thy heart and write." She gazes ruefully at 
the one sheet of note-paper bearing all the ideas 
she has been able to cudgel from her brains with 
the most persistent belaboring. It will take at 
least five pages of that size to make a graduation 
essay of respectable length. Where in chaos is she 
to look for the ideas wherewith to cover the other 
four ? A camel may be evolved from the inner con- 
sciousness, but it would be as easy for the camel 
to go through the eye of a needle as for her to 
successfully trample under foot the difficulties 
which beset her dim and dusty way. She wishes 
she had taken the other subject proposed, "The 
Comparative Claims of the Pisistratidae, Har- 
modius and Aristogiton, to the Government of 
the Grecian Monarchy." She had eighty-nine 
per cent, in Grecian history, and there Is some- 
thing about that subject in the cyclopedia. 

But the teacher is patient, earnest, even enthu- 
siastic, faithful " in season and out of season," 
and a vast deal of "exhibition" work must be 
done in a season which is decidedly " out." 



156 " The Young Idear 

Saturday is not always a holiday, nor Sunday a 
day of rest to the composition teacher. The 
programme must be varied, the essays interest- 
ing, the whole affair a credit to the school. She 
feels very much as if washing her fingers " in 
invisible water with imperceptible soap " as she 
handles the poor little embryonic page and real- 
izes all that is in waiting for her and for her pupil 
who must be "psychologized," "stimulated," 
"incited to think," "educated up to it," or what- 
ever it seems most satisfactory to call the pecu- 
liar process. Then follows a long succession of 
interviews also " in season and out of season," 
principally " out," sandwiched in between recita- 
tions, prolonged after hours in the schoolroom, 
and often carried on in the home of the teacher. 
A few inches Avill serve as a specimen of these 
yards of educational dialogue: 

" Of course we can consider this only as the 
outline — the beginning of your essay. It must 
be at least five minutes long, though it would be 
better if it were ten or fifteen." 

"Yes, I suppose so, but I can't think of any- 
thing more to say." 

" Well, my dear, I am to teach you how to 
think. We must see how we can elaborate the 
subject. That is the benefit you get from work- 
ing on a composition. It enlarges your ideas, 
your vocabulary. Some of these expressions 
are not correct grammatically ; for instance, the 
tense of this verb is — " 



" The Young I dear 157 

'' Oh, dear, I knew better than that, of course. 
I didn't think." The development of the idea 
was so difficult that no particular heed was 
given to the form of expression ; it was a 
triumph to get it to express itself in any shape, 
and only a magician can keep two plates spin- 
ning in the air at the same time. 

*' Your first sentence is rather abrupt, don't 
you think so ? And if you refer to the golden 
rule there is no need of quoting it farther on, as 
every one is supposed to know it. In fact, your 
third sentence, as you see, don't you ? — is only a 
repetition of the first. When you say ' it is very 
easy,' etc., don't you think it would brighten up 
your paper a good deal if you gave some strik- 
ing illustrations ? You might mention Napo- 
leon's career — I will make out a list of books for 
you to look over, then you may re-write that 
part of your essay — perhaps you can think of 
some other historical incidents which could be 
woven in nicely — and bring it to me again to- 
morrow." 

To-morrow might be written down like some 
of the chapters in old reading-books, which al- 
ways had so depressing an appearance to lovers 
of novelty, " Same subject, Continued." The 
next day and the next is still the " Same subject. 
Continued," until at the end of a month which, 
" like a wounded snake drags its slow length 
along," the theme is happily varied by the sub- 
'^^'^"•■'^" " Same subject, Concluded." 



158 " The Yoimg Idea:' 

The teacher's frame of mind over the com- 
pleted composition cannot truthfully be called 
exultant. "We have just had our graduation 
exercises," wrote one of these teachers from the 
west a few months ago. " Everything passed off 
well, and everybody appeared delighted. Now 
I am beginning on the next set of essays. The 
old inflammation of the eyes which troubled me 
so much years ago has returned worse than ever, 
— probably from the amount of night-work — and 
I have a constant headache. But these are 
small matters in comparison with my degrada- 
tion of soul. I feel as if I had inexpressibly 
lowered myself by doing the work that is re- 
quired in this school, aiding and abetting the 
girls in a sort of mental sheep-stealing, for, of 
course, these essays are much more mine than 
theirs. The worst of it is I must pretend that I 
consider it all right and honest. I have no diffi- 
culty with the majority, but when I find a girl a 
little more conscientious or less conceited than 
the average ! I've just had such a case, and it 
was harder for me to manage than all the rest 
put together. I am sure that the girl has lost 
every particle of respect for me, and I am not 
surprised. But what can I do? I cannot afford 
to give up this position, for since father became 
helpless with paralysis, sister Emma has been 
left a widow with three little children. If I were 
idle for a month I don't know what would be- 
come of the two families, and, as you know, my 



" The Young Idear 159 

salary here is large. I cannot see to write more. 
I have written this much in a sort of desperation 
to beg you, in your labor on behalf of teachers, 
to emphasize this one matter of composition 
work. It will help not only teachers, but their 
unconscious victims." 

" Unconscious victims "! What weird signifi- 
cance in those last two words ! And this is but 
one of a large number of similar letters all play- 
ing upon the same sad minor theme with indi- 
vidual variations. One correspondent breaks 
into a major strain for a few lines : 

" It is comical business, — if looked at in one 
way. During the first half-dozen talks with the 
pupil I manage to get out piecemeal nearly all 
the first part of her essay and get in my own 
ideas. I refrain from meddling with the rest 
until that much is safely accomplished. Then I 
attack the end and work backward for another 
half-dozen interviews, leaving the middle un- 
touched. Finally I concentrate my forces upon 
that and re-model the middle, giving finishing 
touches at the s^me time to certain crude spots 
all through the paper. The fun of it all is to 
see how firmly the girl believes that she has 
written the whole of it ! Well, it is certainly 
her composition in the same sense as the man's 
shoes were the same pair he had worn for ten 
years, having new uppers every spring, and every 
winter new soles. But, after all, this is anything 
but a laughing matter." 



i6o <' The Young Idea.'' 

In the mean time the young woman who is 
thoroughly convinced that she would prefer to 
be Trampled than to Trample, etc., has copied, 
for a number of times that she has long before 
lost count of, the paper with which she is well 
pleased both on account of the quantity as well 
as the quality of the Dust and her Fellow- 
Creatures. 

" There is a valuable thought contained in 
these words. They are the utterance of a truth 
which strikes the key-note of all civilized human 
intercourse. It is the practical application of 
that most beneficent moral lesson promulgated 
by the Great Teacher, Do unto others as ye 
would that they should do unto you. 

" Yet in our social world there are many vio- 
lations of this great principle of justice. Napo- 
leon after his celebrated passage of the Alps ; 
in the celebrated battle of Marengo which de- 
cided the fate of Italy ; causing himself to be 
elected First Consul for life with supreme power ; 
issuing the Berlin Decree ; appropriating most 
of the thrones of Europe ; driving to South 
America the royal family of Portugal "; etc., 
etc., " was totally ignoring that great principle," 
etc., etc., etc. 

Truly, here is the original fowling-piece, 
changed only by the addition of a new lock, 
stock, and barrel. 

The first draught shows the original thought 
of the young writer. As the subject presented 



'' The Young Idea'* i6i 

few ideas to her mind, she naturally expressed 
but few, and those few not particularly enter- 
taining to an audience. She went straight to the 
point, but it took less than half a minute to get 
there, and the trip to be properly imposing should 
consume at least five. It was a happy thought 
to travel back a few years and climb with Na- 
poleon to the top of what another pupil calls 
" the mountains which are in the Alps." 

Has the mental power of the writer thereby 
been increased t Has her vocabulary been en- 
larged, the logical faculty developed, a good style 
formed ? Are the conditions of these feverish 
last weeks of the term with the extra labor of 
reviews, the anxieties of examinations, the meas- 
urings and fittings of the dressmaker, favorable 
to genuine mental growth ? 

But shall no compositions be written and read 
by the pupils, or being read, shall they be given 
ill their original crudity ? The answer to this 
question depends wholly upon the answer to 
another, What is the object of the writing and 
reading of compositions ? 

It is apropos of this sort of literary leverage 
that Richter writes : " A nothing writes to a 
nothing ; the whole affair undertaken by the 
desire of the teacher, not of the heart, is a cer- 
tificate of the death of thoughts. Happy is it if 
the commanding volubility of the child, arising 
from coldness and addressed to emptiness, do 
not accustom her to insincerity." But it does, 



i62 " The Young Idea." 

and that is the worst of it, though there are 
many other hurtful elements about it. 

Not long ago Mrs. M. L. Rayne, of the De- 
troit School of Journalism, made this frank ad- 
mission to the Jottr7ial of Education : 

" It has happened that I have been called 
upon many times in my life to write the gradua- 
ting essays of college boys and girls and high 
school pupils, and in nearly every case I have 
acquiesced. The pupil who is about to gradu- 
ate is already bearing an accumulation of bur- 
dens in the review of old studies, the constant 
mental strain, the over-taxing of all the intellect- 
ual faculties, and the severe physical strain which 
attends the closing of a long hard season of in- 
tellectual labor." After stating that in view of 
these circumstances she considered herself justi- 
fied in assisting students, she speaks of the manner 
in which tliese documents are usually produced 
in schools where there is no special composition 
teacher, where the other teachers are too busy to 
do more than suggest a topic, and where friends 
and relatives are appealed to for help. '* The 
girl is finally referred to Irving and Macaulay 
for style and expression. With the master- 
pieces of English literature before her, the pupil 
at last produces a mosaic of thoughts and sen- 
tences in which there is neither individuality, 
observation, originality, or anything but penman- 
ship and adaptation. This is the average essay 
of the public school graduate." 



" The Young Idear 163 

This is followed by a noble protest in a sub- 
sequent issue of the same journal: ''Granting 
all the circumstances, shall the pupil present 
this essay to an audience as her own ? And 
will any teacher approve such a performance ? 
Let us hope not. What is the motive of such a 
plot ? Is its design to save life, health, wealth, 
or education ? If I analyze the matter aright, 
the motive can be at best but personal pride. If 
you approve of such plagiarism among pupils 
upon the spur of pride, how will you teach that 
a cash motive is criminal ? When any person 
encourages pupils to weigh the claims of childish 
or ])arental pride against those of truth, she is 
teaching lessons all too often learned and far 
too often illustrated in the criminal annals of 
the day." 

Are these the words of wisdom or of foolish- 
ness ? Does observation and experience prove 
or disprove them ? 

Commenting upon the same subject, a school 
principal, George W. F. Price of Nashville, Tenn., 
writes thus forcibly : " Under precisely similar 
conditions, while resisting solicitations to write 
essays for graduation, I liave been led to give a 
degree of assistance in the way of corrections, 
emendations, and substitutions, far greater than 
the real interests of the pupil required, or the 
principles of educational philosophy would sanc- 
tion. Girls often present commencement essays 
at the close of a school career who have never 



1 64 " The Young Idea'' 

once during their entire course composed any- 
creditable literary work. As an exponent of 
the pupil's knowledge, it is unreliable ; as a 
test of mental discipline, it is fallacious ; as a 
proof of literary ability, it is wholly untrust- 
worthy ; as an index of the kind of training 
which the school offers, it has no value." He 
also proposes a remedy for these evils : '' Aban- 
don a public exhibition which tortures the pupil, 
annoys the teacher, and leaves to the public, 
after a mild thrill of parental and neighborly 
exultation, the shrug of suspicion or the gibe of 
scorn." If with all its faults the first draught of 
the composition is a fair specimen of the original 
work the pupil is able to do after the regular 
amount of instruction, why is it not as legitimate 
a showing of her attainments in that direction as 
in mathematics or the sciences ? 

If the object is the entertainment of an audi- 
ence, why not place the essay on the same honest 
footing as the violin solo or piano duet ? Nobody 
supposes that these musical performances are 
the result of school training. ' Why should there 
be any attempt to make the literary exercises 
appear so ? 

A teacher asked a pupil if he could prove the 
problem in division which he had upon his slate. 
" Yes, I could prove it easy enough if it wasn't 
all wrong," was the answer. The same trouble is 
found in the composition problem. The divis- 
or, — the teacher, multiplied by the quotient, — the 



" The Young Idea'' ^65 

composition, would equal the dividend, — the 
pupil, if the process had been correct. Unfor- 
tunately the result is far in excess of the original 
amount. 

There is another difficulty in the way of 
" proving " this sort of work, " Don't use my 
name," is the formula which in nearly every 
letter received from teachers takes the place and 
means the same as the more common phrase- 
ology, " Burn this as soon as read." There is 
more than one helpless father, widowed sister, 
and orphan child to be cared for by devoted 
women who have no freedom of choice between 
principle and pocket. One cannot walk bare- 
footed, no matter how much the shoe pinches, 
nor rest by the roadside while there are others 
to be carried along the way. 

Impossibilities are attempted in composition 
work. Rather than " give up beat " teachers 
reluctantly put their own " shoulder-blades to 
the wheels," and verily we can all " shee them 
go round." Bufwith what friction, — what wear 
and tear to the machinery ! And is anybody in 
the world wiser or better for this enormous 
expenditure of time and force ? 

How refreshing to read once more some of 
the genuine " composition " work ; to turn to the 
rough, uncut, but honest stones, after the shallow 
and sickly sparkle of the poor paste diamonds. 

" It says in one of the great authors that 
dreams is the stuff nightmares are made of. I 



i66 " The Young Idear 

have the nightmares. My grammar says its 
pie grammars don't like to have there pies cut. 
jim says my cousin its hookin the pie taint 
eating it that makes the nightmares, nightmares 
aint as nice as the pie and this is all I know 
about dreams." 

'' Do you think that Jesus hung up his stock- 
ing Christmas eve to be filled by Santa Claus ? 
If you do you are much mistaken. And why 
did he not ? One reason was that he had none. 
And why had he none ? Because he was born 
in the torrid zone, where stockings are never 
used. Nor are they to this day." 

Still the art of composition has been steadily 
improving during the last twenty years, if one 
may judge from the style of an " oration " pre- 
pared that length of time ago and delivered at 
an Academy commencement. 

** THE ELEMENTS AND USES OF HISTORY. 

" The phenomena of nature exists by the sacred 
symbols of this golden age. There are pyramids 
and temples of Ucatan seen to have been old in 
the days of Pharioh, when Nero, Romilus, and 
Sylvius Procras were leaving a type of stagnation 
by their elemental mystery to be recorded upon 
the scanty catalogue of the benefactors of the 
human kind. Greece wears a stain upon the 
annals of history by chaining Socrates, the exi- 
cutioner who administered that poisonous plant 
with its fatal touch caused death to take posses- 



" The Young Idea:' 167 

sion of a mind which was as strong as a sturdy- 
oak bursting forth from a little acorn, causing 
the acuteness of some happy observer to reflect 
upon the laws of nature. Napoleon, when the 
fortunes of war overtook him we find him incar- 
cerated in the gloomy prison wall at St. Helena. 
Lafayette went forth with that guiding spirit 
which conducted him over the pathless ocean 
to his countries call, and after that felicitious 
theory he worked out a niche that will radi- 
ate forever upon America's brightest pages. 
Wise and useful shipmasters were guided by 
the magnet from off the shoals and quicksands 
so Washingtons history guided by the elements 
that float like the little moats in the sunbeam. 
At the first struggles of our national conflicts 
our brave and generous sons fought upon the 
threshold of liberty bearing in one hand a 
true spirit of Seventy-six and in the other 
a banner which has been reddened by its gore. 
The heroes who upheld every intrest of their 
country in facing' death all along the peninsula 
and victorious over Lee at Richmond add epi- 
taphs to that mournful shaft determined that no 
plume of her renown should ever be defaced." 



i68 " The Young Idea:* 



CHAPTER XIII. 

" A DOUBLE-SCULL RACE." 

'' A DOUBLE-SCULL race," remarked an old lady, 
catching sight in the newspaper of an item on 
the subject. " Thet's something like. Mebbe 
now there'll be a stop put to this everlastin' 
talkin' about fiUin' childern's heads fuUer'n they 
can hold. Seems to me we don't hear nothin' 
else these days." 

" Cram " is a short word, easy to spell, easy to 
pronounce, while its meaning is perfectly plain 
to Strasburg geese and nineteenth-century chil- 
dren in all the civilized countries of the globe. 
It has also secured good and regular standing 
in our dictionaries, where it makes an innocent 
appearance as '* Preparation for an examination 
by a hasty review of studies." 

So far as known, the late Prof. W. Stanley 
Jevons, one of England's most eminent scholars, 
is the only advocate who has appeared on behalf 
of Cram in the famous case of Croaker vs. Cram, 
a litigation which bids fair to rival that of Jarn- 
dyce and Jarndyce. In some respects it re- 
sembles that historic lawsuit. " It has passed 
into a joke," for one thing. *' It still drags its 
weary length before the court, perennially hope- 
less. Even those who have contemplated its 
history from the ©utermost circle of such evil 



" The Young Idear 169 

have been insensibly tempted into a loose way 
of letting bad things alone to take their own bad 
course, and a loose belief that if the world go 
wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never 
meant to go right. Innumerable children have 
been born into the cause." Poor Miss Flite 
has the company of thousands of similar clients. 
Like her they say, " I have the honor to attend 
court regularly — with my documents. From 
whence do these papers come, you say ? That is 
the great question. I expect a judgment shortly — 
at the day of judgment." 

In the mean time the learned advocate thus 
argues: "This word has all the attributes of a 
perfect question-begging epithet. It is short, em- 
phatic, and happily derived from a disagreeable 
physical metaphor. There is no difficulty in seeing 
that Cram means two different things, what I call 
Good Cram and Bad Cram." Brilliant illus- 
tration of a distinction without a difference — 
" what I call a Good Evil and a Bad Evil." This 
can hardly fail to remind one of the definition 
of metaphysics — " Metaphysics, the considera- 
tion of immateriality, substance without solidity, 
neitlier large nor small, hot nor cold, wet nor 
dry, long nor short; the essence of an abstrac- 
tion." 

"All the world," some one says, " professes to 
be opposed to cramming, yet the system never- 
theless goes on, not only unchecked, but to a 
greater extent year after year." Like malaria, 



i7o " The Youtig Idea.'* 

" Oh, no, we never have any of it here ! There 
was talk a spell ago, of there bein' some over in 
the other deestrick." Teachers are the only ones 
to acknowledge its existence — when the doors 
are shut, the children playing outside, and the 
trustees have gone home to dinner. Later, the 
pupils, recess finished, return to the school- 
room to " study." An analysis of the pecu- 
liar process is interesting. Not long ago a 
little girl was ' studying" half-aloud a lesson in 
grammar, rocking herself to and fro, as her glib 
tongue kept time with the movement. "Appel- 
lations of the Deity should always begin with a 
capital. Appellations of the Deity should al- 
ways begin with a capital. Appellations of the 
Deity should always begin with a capital." 

An older sister, sewing near by, ventured the 
question, " What do you mean by appellations ? " 
A blank stare. " I don't know. That's what 
the book says." '' What do you mean by 
Deity ? " Another stare, equally blank. " / 
don't know. Teacher didn't tell us to learn that. 
Don't bother me. I've got to study my lesson." 
So the intellectual exercise was resumed, accom- 
panied by the rocking and the muttering, " Ap- 
pellations of the Deity should always begin 
with a capital," until the "lesson " was declared 
"learned." Is it surprising that from brains 
thus cultivated should issue such statements 
as, " The head contains the brains when there is 
any." 



" The Young Idea:' 171 

" Topacto will make the bones weak and it 
will stump the groth." 

" When the price of one article we must add to 
find the costs." 

" A verb is anything expressed in words." 

" The Saxon Cronicle gave notes to the 
Saxons." 

" Orion was a very famous Latin astronomer." 

"A fire ventilates the fireplace and produces 
a current filled with hot water or steam." 

'' In Mississippi vvhen the cotton is ripe, cotton 
gin is poured into the pods to take the seeds 
out." 

■' The Greek translation of the New Testament 
was called Latin." 

" John Skeleton satirised the church and all 
was in it expressing himself in a powerful master- 
fully way." 

But the learned advocate in the cause of 
Cram insists, " Even in the worst kind of 
Cram the blockhead suffers no harm. To exer- 
cise the memory is better than to leave the 
brain wholly at rpst." What a unique sort of 
logic ! We must either cram or not cram. It 
is better to cram than not to cram. Therefore 
cram. Is this the strongest argument which 
the counsel for the defense can submit to an en- 
lightened jury ? Must it then resolve itself into 
a choice of evils — cramming or collapse ? If so, 
the case is indeed hard for the complainant. 

" It is one of the standing arguments for the 



172 " The Young Idea'' 

indestructibility of human nature that it has not 
been destroyed by the assaults of the schoolmas- 
ter," says an authority on this subject, the Rev. 
A. D. Mayo, and we can imagine the sly smile 
with which President Chadbourne of Williams 
College said that so far as his early education 
was concerned, the thing he was most thankful 
for was that he lived so far from the schoolhouse 
that he was absent most of the time. 

Richter announced years ago, " The greatest, 
the most important, the most useful rule of 
all education is not to gain time but to lose 
it." If he were right, modern educators must 
be all wrong, for we can not go forward and 
backward, we can not hurry and stand still, we 
can not eat voraciously and starve to death, at the 
same time. 

As long ago as 1848, Horace Mann wrote : 
" It seems to me that one of the greatest errors in 
education at the present day is the desire and 
ambition to teach in single lessons systems, doc- 
trines, and theorems which years of analysis are 
scarcely sufficient to unfold." (Years of anal- 
ysis ! Why, bless your heart, the dear child- 
ren have no suspicion of any such fact. Their 
comfortable consciousness of wisdom is eminent- 
ly self-satisfying. "Young America " is always 
"equal to the occasion," or thinks he is, which is 
probably the next best thing.) " All is adminis- 
tered in a mass. We strive to introduce knowl- 
edge into a child's mind the great end first," 



" The Young Idea:' i73 

Sometimes, though, even under that process, it 
*' comes out of the little end of the horn," as — 

" An ellipsis is an omission which omits words 
when ellipsis is omission allowable and supplies 
the mind which is certainty and readiness not ob- 
scuring the sense." 

That charming essayist and keen critic, tlie 
late Edwin P. Whipple, of Boston, once wrote, 
"The mischief of intellectual conceit in our day 
consists in its arresting mental growth at the 
start by stuffing the mind with the husks of pre- 
tentious generalities, which, while they impart 
no vital force and convey no real information, 
give seeming enlargement to thought and repre- 
sent a seeming opulence of knowledge." 

This "seeming opulence" is no unfamiliar 
sort of wealth, even to the most impecunious 
instructors. Of such is : 

" Breathing power is developed make the di- 
gestion stronger, make the animal heat increased 
accumulation of the fat diminished and to be in 
a open air and to 'have lots of outside exercise." 

" No other at the Court could vie with Sir 
Philip Sidney in punctilious adhearance to the 
current rules of the etiquette of the Court and 
times. Everybody fell victims to his suavity. 
He was of the most accurate and correct cour- 
tesy." 

Says a writer in a late number of the Christian 
Union, " There is an insane idea prevalent both 
in and out of the school-room that success in 



174 " The Voung I dear 

study is measured not by the quality of knowl- 
edge acquired, but by the quantity of ground 
covered. The pupil crams himself with an array 
of names, dates, and events. He can tell you 
the date of the Magna Charta, but whether it 
was a document or an animal he hardly knows." 
Sometimes he does not consider it either the one 
or the other : 

" Magner Carter was the place where the King 
had the exclusive right to kill game everywheres 
all over the kingdom and secured the great bull- 
work to the English people." 

'* Magna Chartar was secured by king John 
to take all the rights away from the people. It 
was called Magna Chartar because it was a big 
oak tree — somewhere in Connecticut." 

Says Superintendent Stone, of Hyde Park, 
Mass., " The attempt to carry so many bundles 
of facts along ever-diverging lines overloads the 
memory, disheartens and disgusts the child." 
Sometimes the facts suffer in their turn. The 
little arms prove too short and weak for the 
many heavy and bulky bundles which they 
strive to embrace. The contents are liable to 
be spilled and thereby to become more or less 
mixed, as in 

" Syren pertaining to Syria." 

"Hierarchy, the house the pope lives in." 

" Solution a compound of metals." 

** You can remove the animal from the bone 
by putting it into the fire." 



" The Young Idea:' i75 

" The femur the largest bone in the body is 
situated in the ear." 

" Brokerage is the hay and straw in which 
brakerble things are packed." 

" Bent is a participle from the verb to be." 

Says Dr. Hammond in the Popular Science 
Monthly iox April, 1887 : "For children to be 
reduced to one common- level as they are in 
our schools almost without exception, and to 
have studies crowded upon them in advance of 
their brain development, are crimes against Na- 
ture which Nature in her blind way expiates by 
punishing the wrong person, but which those 
who know the right should promptly expose." 

" Our school-masters," says Sir John Lubbock, 
'* too often act as if all school-children were going 
to be school-masters themselves," and another 
writer, a fierce rebel against the English system, 
" They insist upon the infant mind gulping down 
tasteless masses of instructional porridge." Dick- 
ens has graphically described one of these En- 
glish teachers : "One of a hundred and forty 
others turned out'at the same time from the same 
factory on the same principles, like so many 
piano-forte legs. He had been put through an 
immense variety of paces and had answered 
volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthog- 
raphy, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biogra- 
phy, astronomy, geography, and general cos- 
mography, compound proportion, algebra, land 
surveying and leveling, vocal music, and draw- 



176 *' The Young Idea,'* 

ing from models, were all at the end of his ten 
fingers. He had taken the bloom off the higher 
branches of mathematics, physical science, 
French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew 
all about all the watersheds of all the world and 
all the histories of all the peoples and all the 
names of all the rivers and mountains and all 
the productions, manners, and customs of all 
the countries and all their boundaries and bear- 
ings on all the points of the compass." Mr. 
M'Choakumchild is a type of a class of teachers 
so " educated," in America as well as in Europe, 
and who, in attempting, from the best of mo- 
tives, to drag children along with them, as they 
stride in their intellectual seven-league boots 
over the province of all knowledge, seldom real- 
ize the desperate endeavors made by the pigmies 
who are trying to keep step with them. These 
are the instructors who perfectly agree with Mrs. 
Pipchin in her theory of education as unfolded 
to Mr. Dombey, "There is a great deal of non- 
sense and worse — talked about young people 
not being pressed too hard at first, and being 
tempted on and all the rest of it, sir. It never 
was thought of in my time, and it has no busi- 
ness to be thought of now. My opinion is, * keep 
'em at it ' ! " It is in reference to this system that 
another English writer, himself a famous teacher, 
thus expresses himself: " I say deliberately that 
there are persons who really deserve penal servi- 
tude for provoking what are neither more nor 



" The Yotmg I dear 177 

less than brutal assaults on the brains and nerves 
of innocent children." 

Squeers's school has been execrated ever 
since it was photographed and held up to 
public view, but in sorne respects the Squeers 
system is far ahead of Mr. M'Choakumchild's. 
"We go on the practical mode of teach- 
ing, Nickleby, the regular education system. 
C-1-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to 
scour. W-i-n, wind, d-e-r, der, winder, a case- 
ment. When the boy knows this out of a book, he 
goes and does it. When he has learned that 
botteney is a knowledge of plants, he goes and 
knows 'em. That's our system, Nickleby. What 
do you think of it ?" To any one who thinks of it 
at all, it would seem that an occasional chance to 
exchange books and slates for scouring cloth and 
trowel, and an opportunity for taking object les- 
sons out of doors might prove preferable to some 
other systems which are held in higher repute. 

There is a vast difference of opinion concern- 
ing the amount of damage done by the cram- 
ming process. One writer thus holds forth on the 
" Terrible Results of Over-Study": " It is get- 
ting to be a well-accepted proposition that all 
children are simply mad to study themselves 
into mental paralysis and need to be held back 
by main force from knowing so much that they 
will 'bust.* To be sure we have never met 
any of this sort of children ourselves, and when 
we hunt for them they are all in some other city 



178 •' The Young I dear 

a long distance off ; the sort we know require 
much labor and occasionally a club to encourage 
them to know anything at all. But this is now 
diabolical heresy and we do penance by repub- 
lishing from the Journal of Education the follow- 
ing genuine composition written in 1879, by a 
Boston school girl in one of the best schools, who 
was evidently ruining her health by intellectual 
exertion : ' I would like to tell you what I have 
learned about the ruminous the cow is a domes- 
tic animal and the cow has four stumachs the 
cow is a domestic or tame animal. The cows 
eyes are made so that they can see back of 
themselves has well as forward and Sideways the 
cow is found in every Country. The cows horns 
are made out of buttons and knife handles. 
The cow chew gress and vetuable. The cow 
skin is made out of beef. The cow is divid 
into three groups. The cow is the most useful 
animal the cow is a clothen foothed animal. In 
side of the cow hon is a pith. It goes into the 
first Stumach where it is moisen and then it goes 
into the second Stumach it is soken, and then it 
goes into the three Stumach where it is made into 
balls, then it comes into the mouth wehr it chew 
again, and then goes into the fourth Stumach.' " 
Few children " bust" as far as heard from, 
probably from successful use of main force, while 
the sort that requires the ''occasional club" 
is by no means rare. But joking aside, what 
are the facts of the case? Even some teachers 



" The Young I dear i79 

assert that the injury done to children is wholly 
due to social dissipations of various sorts. But 
from whence come the children who fill our 
public schools ? Do they not represent the 
middle and lowest classes of the community ? 
An impression has somehow gained ground that 
social dissipations are indulged in principally by 
the class which patronizes fashionable boarding 
and private schools ; but this must be a mistake.' 
Then it is the children of our clerks and trades- 
men, mechanics and laborers, who are brought up 
in these lives of luxurious and injurious ease ; 
who are at a constant revel of balls and parties, 
theatres and operas ; eating rich suppers every 
night ; partaking of quail on toast, stewed terrapin 
and Welsh rarebit at irregular intervals through 
the day, feasting on miscellaneous pastry, and al- 
ways having fancy boxes of confectionery heaped 
upon the toilette tables of their boudoirs. 

Miss Julia Richman asserts as the results of 
her experience for fifteen years in a New York 
grammar school, " Worriment, overstudy, loss 
of appetite, and broken sleep are the rule and 
not the exception with girls in the First Grade 
classes." 

But let the schools stand acquitted of all re- 
sponsibility in the matter, since it is not the re- 
quirements of the school-room, but social dissi- 
pation which is the cause of this lamentable 
state of things. 

Yet a host of fathers and mothers indignantly 



i8o << The Young Idear 

protest against this charge of social dissipa- 
tion, — working men and women who are waiting 
as patiently as they possibly can for their boys 
and girls to graduate from the public school 
that they may become bread-winners in their turn. 
These parents tell sorrowful, but, of course, 
grossly improbable, tales of long hours of home 
study ; restless nights, with no appetite for break- 
fast ; headaches, lassitude, irritability ; feverish 
anxiety accompanying examination days ; posi- 
tive agony from fear of losing " marks," being 
" marked down," having ** so low a per cent, that 
she can't pass," (it is usually '* She ") — these un- 
reasonable fathers and mothers, disturbers of the 
public peace and the public school system, do 
not hesitate to declare, in the most emphatic and 
shameless manner, that these things are familiar 
experiences in the majority of households. 

" My daughter has four lessons to prepare 
every day," one of these mothers boldly asserted. 
"Yesterday her algebra alone kept her busy till 
ten o'clock at night, and her father helped her all 
the evening. She did not even look at her other 
lessons, and she's so behindhand in her work 
that she is worrying herself to death for fear she 
won't be promoted." This was said of a sensi- 
tive, conscientious, rapidly-growing girl of fif- 
teen, having before her a future with all its 
pro])abilities of household and maternal cares, 
with all the demands which our civilization ard 
society make upon the woman of to-day, and her 



" The Young Idea!* i8i 

mother did not hesitate to affirm in the most un- 
blushing manner, as if she really believed that 
she were telling the truth and expected others to 
believe it also, that her daughter's case was not 
the only one of the same sort. 

"Why don't you complain to the principal ?" 
" Well, I did write a note to him awhile ago to 
see what could be done, and he said the only 
thing for her to do, if she could not keep up with 
the class, was to go into a lower one. Of course 
she wouldn't do that." 

" Why don't you take her out of school ? " 
" Oh, I can't do that, for she's going to try for 
a teacher's position after she graduates. She 
must do something, of course," and this garru- 
lous mother really seemed to think that the per- 
plexing responsibility thus laid upon her was not 
only more than she could bear, but that it was 
in some way an imposition and an outrage grow- 
ing out of a defective school system, 

"Over-work ! "remarked another irate parent, 
" There is precious little over-work in some of 
our schools. There is not half enough in some 
of them. But it's the over-crowding, over-hurry- 
ingj, and over-worrying, that keeps my children 
half the time as cross as little bears, though I 
can't see that they are learning much of any- 
thing." 

Mrs. Mary J. Holmes ventures the heretical 
assertion in a leading St. Louis newspaper : " I 
believe there were more really thorough scholars 



i82 " The Young Idear 

turned out from the schools years ago than are 
produced to-day with all the modern improve- 
ments in teaching. The fault lies in the system 
which crowds into four or five years what ought 
to occupy double that length of time, and the 
girl forgets to-morrow what she has learned 
to-day. I know perfectly well that I shall be 
called an old fogy if not a crank" (she may be 
reasonably sure of both titles) ''if I insist that 
the forcing system is conducive neither to a good 
education, good health, or beauty of face or 
form. The girl bends over her books until the 
words run together and her eyes grow dim and 
her mind dimmer, so that she has no clear con- 
ception of what she has learned, or rather com- 
mitted, for oftentimes it is nothing more than a 
committal to be repeated parrot-like next day 
and then lost entirely, as water runs through a 
sieve. The stomach cannot be overcrowded 
without rebelling, nor can the brains be over- 
taxed without a protest ; and a tired brain is 
harder to manage than an overloaded stomach. 
Look at some of the girls who are struggling 
with too many and too long lessons, trying to 
keep up and pass from grade to grade so as to 
be graduated at last and declared educated. 
Hollow-eyed, haggard and pale, and often high- 
shouldered from stooping so constantly over their 
books, they seem to have lost all the beauty and 
elasticity of youth, and to be growing prema- 
turely old, 



" The Young Hear ^^3 

'* A young married woman, who was for years 
a student in a graded school, told me that her 
room-mate was in the habit of taking very strong 
tea at night in order to keep herself awake, her 
lessons were so long and difficult. What kind of 
nerves or health would a girl have who con- 
tinued this practice for any length of time ? No 
wonder that so many break down with nervous 
prostration, forgetting all they have learned and 
unable to grasp anything clearly and well. A 
married lady, whose children have been through 
the cramming process, likens it to a salad, which 
I think is a good name. A brain salad, com- 
posed of rhetoric and philosophy and algebra 
and geometry, German and Latin, and a mul- 
tiplicity of other branches, which the girl must 
take up if she would at the last be graduated and 
receive her diploma. And in not one of these is 
she thorough. For how can she know much of 
a subject to which she has given only three or 
six months' time ? " 

Wherein lies the difference between those 
schools of years, ago to which Mrs. Holmes 
alludes, and those of our day, — carefully graded, 
placed in handsome, commodious buildings ; with 
every provision for physical comfort ; with every 
knov/n invention and appliance for intellectual 
labor? One of our best educators thus answers 
the question : "Neither schools, teachers, nor 
brains were better in the days of the district 
school than they are now. But those brains 



1^4 '* The Young Idea'' 

were not distracted with a vast number of sub- 
jects, nor continually worried over the * examin- 
ation ' and ' per cent.' which like the car of Jug- 
gernaut our children of to-day see mercilessly ap- 
proaching to roll over them at the end of the 
term." 

Montesquieu asserted, " The love of study 
is in us almost the eternal passion. " What do 
our schools accomplish in creating and fostering 
this love? **We have only," says Ascot R, 
Hope, ** our staid and formal methods of in- 
struction. In the ears of our young, the songs 
of the nurses are accompanied — or shall we say 
drowned — by the creaking of our rusty barrel- 
organs whereon time-honored educational for- 
mulas are ground out with due solemnity." 

But granting that no case of hydrophobia, de- 
lirium tremens, or progressive locomotor ataxia, 
has ever been traced directly to the '* cram- 
ming" in the schools ; granting, too, that all the 
pupils grow rapidly in grace of soul and body, 
what is to be said of their growth in knowledge 
at the same time ? 

The valedictorian of a class stands as its re- 
presentative. Here are the words of one who 
had filled that position both in the grammar 
school and in the high school from which she 
had graduated four years later : " All this talk 
about 'cramming' in our schools is just as true 
as it can be. I wish more would be said about 
it. The way we've been rushed through these 



''The Young Idea" 185 

last five years, — why, you have no idea ! It's 
been dreadfully hard on some of the girls, but 
not one of them has really broken down — yet. 
The worst of it all is that there's been so little 
time for explanations and reviews that some of 
the girls feel as if they didn't know anything !" 
with indescribable empliasis on the last word. 

Now should any young woman be allowed to 
talk in that reckless, exaggerated, and prepos- 
terously untruthful way ? It is an incendiary 
sort of speech. The words might do much mis- 
chief if overheard by some of the unprincipled 
radicals, the blood-thirsty educational anarchists 
who are aching for an opportunity to destroy the 
true, the beautiful, the good, as represented by 
our flourishing institutions of learning. The 
city, after educating her, should muzzle her, lest 
she damage its dearest interests. 

At the same time one is forced to admit that 
it is this sort of '* education " which leaves a 
pupil so unfamiliar with the dictionary that its 
most simple signs and abbreviations are as unin- 
telligible to hi'm as Egyptian hieroglyphics ; 
which renders him as helpless in a library 
as if he were in a Roman catacomb, and 
finds him plunged into confusion worse con- 
founded before a shelf of cyclopedias and ref- 
erence books. 

It is this sort of education also which results 
in a pupil being unable to tell what per cent, is 
gained or lost in a mercantile transaction be- 



1 86 " The Young Idear 

cause the amount is more or less than the stand- 
ard one hundred ; to calculate on the quantity of 
brick required to build a wall, oblivious of the 
fact that most walls have height as well as 
length and breadth ; to estimate on the yards of 
calico necessary for a bed-quilt, ignoring the 
item that bed-quilts in general have tw^o sides ; 
to assume that in the poem of Maud Muller, the 
roofs, ''white from their hill-slopes looking 
down," were covered with snow, although the 
heroine of the story was, at that same minute 
"raking the meadows sweet with hay"; that 
" the Olympian games were announced by the 
newspapers because a herald went through all 
the cities," and that "philosophical histories run 
back to the time years and years before there 
was anybody or anything ha})pened." 

" Knowledge is of two kinds," said Dr. 
Johnson. "We know a subject ourselves or 
we know where we can find some information 
upon it "; and another wise man, " To know 
where to look for what we don't know, is the 
next best thing to having the facts in memory. 
It would be as reasonable for a man to try to own 
everything that he could by any possibility want, 
so as not to patronize the grocer and butcher, as 
to try to know everything so as not to be obliged 
to consult books and libraries." Anna C. Brack- 
ett of New York, who is well known as one of 
our most wide-awake and independent, as well 
as successful teachers, says in effect: " Books are 



" The Young Idea.'* 187 

made to keep facts in. Why should I try to 
keep them all in my head ? I have other 
uses for my brains. If I want a fact, I know 
where to go for it, and 1 intend that my pupils 
shall." 

" When you know a thing, to know that you 
know it, and when you do not knoAv a thing, to 
allow that you do not know it, this," says Con- 
fucius, " is knowledge," yet not one pupil in 
one hundred will ever make to a question the 
wise answer, " I do not know," or leave a blank 
line upon an examination paper, 

" Here we see most distinctly," says Herbert 
Spencer, '' the vice of our educational system. It 
neglects the plant for the flowers" (and such 
flowers !) ** and in anxiety for elegance it for- 
gets substance. So overwhelming is the in- 
fluence of established routine ; so terribly in 
our education does the ornamental override' the 
useful ! " How far some of our results are to 
be considered ornamental, or beautiful, is a 
matter upon which all might not agree, but we 
probably shall not disagree on one point, — that 
very little of our *' ornamental " education will 
ever verify the words of Schiller, 
" What as Beauty here is won 
We shall as Truth in some hereafter know," 
Many of our colleges are doing, to-day, work 
supposed to be done in our high schools, and 
even in our grammar schools. It is not always 
a safe or an easy operation to tear out and re- 



1 88 '' The Youfig I dear 

construct the foundations of a dwelling after 
the family has moved in and settled down. One 
of the professors at Cornell University thus pro- 
tests : *' The examinations held in our colleges 
indicate defects in our public school system ; 
these defects are found in familiar subjects, and 
not merely in the more difficult. The high 
schools must meet the just demands of the 
colleges or their work will devolve upon private 
and endowed schools. The evils of our present 
system are due to a dissipation of attention 
through a multiplicity of studies." 

As for the teachers, ground between the upper 
and the nether mill-stones of Cram and Con- 
science, many a one among them can cry : 
" My nature is subdued 

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand ; 

Pity me then, and wish I were renewed." 

Some of them can testify to the truth of the 
statement made by Milton's fallen angel, that 
"our torments may in time become our elements." 

Our public school system has gradually devel- 
oped into an enormous and elaborate machine 
which works with the precision of a fine engine, 
and, as relentlessly as the engine, grinds to 
powder anything which interfers with its pistons 
and wheels. Swift and perpetual motion of the 
machine is the object aimed at. The people 
stand around it, look at it, wonder at it, specu- 
late about it, many admiring it, some even dar- 
ing to find fault with it, but no attempt is made 



" The Young Idea:' 189 

to slacken its speed or change its mode of mo- 
tion. No blood is visible, and if any bones are 
broken the sound is lost in the ceaseless whirring 
of the wheels. There is never a call for an 
ambulance, and no liospital has ever been erected 
near it. And the splendid specimens that the 
engine turns out ! Look at the finished articles 
when tliey are arranged in orderly rows and 
placed on annual — or semi-annual — exhibition. 
There are only a few broken pieces — so far — in 
this array of complete and polished figures. 

Meanwhile we occasionally read strange state- 
ments in our educational papers. 

** In the new plan of studies recently adopted in 
Prussia for the superior school of girls there is 
a marked decrease in the number of studies and 
of hours of home study, while more hours are 
assigned to manual work and physical exer- 
cises." 

" The Swiss Minister of Instruction has under- 
taken a revision of the law regulating higher 
education, on the ground that the present code is 
not based on sound psychological principles, and 
that it ignores, almost entirely, the natural de- 
velopment of the mind. Among other changes 
proposed is a reduction of the time given to the 
classics." 

" The subject of over-pressure, after a tem- 
porary lull, is reviving in Germany, An appeal 
to the public has been signed by seventy leading 
men in German-speaking countries. They pro- 



190 ** The Young Idea'* 

pose to address enquiries upon the subject to 
the most eminent thinkers of Germany, Austria, 
and Switzerland, and to publish the opinions and 
information elicited thereby. They declare that 
the pale cheeks, the increase of nervous debility, 
the precocity of children, are so many silent wit- 
nesses against the modern system of education, 
and there is a deep conviction among the wisest 
thinkers of our time that neither the scholastic 
nor the domestic training of our youth is tend- 
ing to the development of a race sound in mind 
and body." 

" We do not," says the Afidover Review, '* over- 
look the many excellencies of our school system. 
We recognize not only its educational, but also 
its social and political advantages. We have no 
sympathy with those who see nothing to praise 
and everything to condemn. But neither do we 
concur in the opinion that the public school is 
the chief glory of America. So extensive a 
system must have some drawbacks. It is our 
decided opinion, however, that there are some 
evils which are more than incidental, and that it 
is the duty of those who make education their 
business to modify the system at the necessary 
points." 



" The Yoiuig I dear ^9^ 

CHAPTER XIV. 

'' WHAT YOU don't KNOW." 

Dr. Wm. B. Harlow, of Syracuse, New York, 
thus discourses in one of the educational maga- 
zines upon the pupils' dreaded Day of Judg- 
ment : " Hair is made to stand on end, presum- 
ably for a free passage of ideas; heads are held 
together as if to prevent them from bursting. 
Some calm spirits are attacking the examination 
paper with the greatest deliberation; others rush 
madly at it determined to throttle the beast at 
once. Some sit helplessly back in pathetic des- 
pair. The faces of others gleam with satisfac- 
tion as they read over just the questions they 
had prepared upon. Others are looking fur- 
tively around as if to discover whether the coast 
is clear for examining certain formulse inscribed 
in microscopic characters on cuffs and finger- 
nails. Some are, eating pencil-tops and others 
seem to be writing with their noses." 

Can any teacher fail to recognize this picture of 
a class which has just stepped across the threshold 
of the Torture Chamber, regarding with varied 
expressions of the countenance the intellectual 
racks and thumb-screws cunningly devised to 
extract information from their reluctant brains? 
A composite photograph of such a group would 
certainly be a curiosity. 



192 " The Young Idea.'' 

To write a composition, to pass an examina- 
tion, — these are two ordeals which strike terror 
to the souls of all school children, yet which, like 
war, count their victims by thousands and tens 
of thousands. 

" Examination is finding out what you dont 
know," wrote one of the lambs prepared for 
the sacrifice. Possibly the unwillingness of the 
pupil to display his ignorance may account for 
his dread of the finding out. 

'' My young friends, there is a pittomless bot," 
impressively quoted a speaker somewhat flustered 
at being unexpectedly called upon for a speech 
before a Sunday-school audience. It is into this 
gulf of dark despair that the mere mention 
of compositions and examinations — these two 
necessary educational processes — appears to 
plunge the young souls, one of whom lately wrote 
surreptitiously upon a blackboard a variation of 
the first two lines of Luther's famous hymn, 

" The Day of Wrath — examination day, 
When all my knowledge vanishes away. " 

Prof. Jevons in an article published in Mind 
more than ten years ago declared : "There is no 
difficulty in seeing what period of life the exami- 
nation system has now reached. It is that critical 
age at which its progress is so marked as to raise 
wide-spread irritation." 

But he further states with depressing truthful- 
ness, " Parents and the public have little idea how 



" The Young Lie a*' 193 

close a resemblance there is between teaching 
and writing on the sands of the sea unless there 
is a distinct capacity for learning on the part of 
the pupil, or some system of examination and 
reward to force the pupil to apply. L hold that 
examination is one of the chief elements of an 
effective education, I hold that the agony of 
the examination room is an anticipation of the 
struggles of life. Examination represents the 
really active, grinding process in the pupil's 
mind ; the active, as opposed to the passive, part 
of education." 

The teacher, who, under the inspiration of 
Prof. Jevons's emphatic words, climbs a mental 
Mount Pisgah, determined to take another and 
more hopeful view of the Promised Land, is 
again prostrated in the Valley of Humiliation 
by the following assortment of metaphors: 
" Labor spent on the prescribed courses of 
study has left so much work untouched, that 
spur, and goad, and gallop must finish the rest. 
The examination^ questions, like so many sharp 
hooks, are drawn backward and forward 
through the lacerated fibre of mind in the 
attempt to grapple some fact memorized with 
sufficient coherence to permit of its being 
dragged forth. The examiners are made into a 
class of respectable rag-pickers, the respecta- 
bility arising from the fact that the probes, in- 
stead of rooting about in ash-barrels, are thrust 
into vital processes and living sensibilities." 



1 94 " The Yoimg Idea.** 

A school-boy once composed the following: 
'' Wendill Philips used to explode with elo- 
quence when he talked to people about how 
wicked it was to keep slaves and things and 
grayhouns to settum onto." Our attacker of 
the examination system appears to have ex- 
ploded in the same fashion and in an equally 
righteous cause, although his equestrian, anatom- 
ical, and ash-barrel figures suggest the sen- 
tence — and have much of its effect, — " I smell a 
rat and see it in the air, but I'll nip it in the 
bud ! " 

Between Prof. Jevons at one extreme, and 
this Chicago critic at the other, stand a host of 
perplexed and thoughtful educators, trying to 
reach some solution of the problem presented in 
the word " Examinations." Prof. Huxley said 
nearly fifteen years ago : " Examination, like 
fire, is a good servant, but a bad master, and 
there seems to me some danger of its becoming 
our master. Students appear to become deteri- 
orated by the constant effort to pass this or 
that examination, just as we hear of men's brains 
becoming affected by the daily necessity of 
catching a train. They work to pass, not to 
know, and outraged Science takes her revenge. 
They do pass and they don't." 

Col. Parker says: " I believe that the greatest 
obstacle in the way of real teaching to-day is 
the standard of examinations. Those who 
understand children will readily appreciate the 



" The Young Idea'* 195 

excitement and strain under which they labor 
when their fate depends upon the correct 
answering of ten disconnected subjects." He 
thinks that many of them do their worst, instead 
of their best, under such circumstances, because 
they are so highly-wrought. Does not every 
teacher know that there are cases of this kind ? 
It is not a matter of opinion but a matter of 
fact. Many times, too, the teacher is surprised 
to find that the paper of one of his best scholars 
falls below that of an inferior pupil, the latter 
less disturbed, perhaps, by the examination 
atmosphere, or better able to work under 
stimulus. Mr. S. C. Stone, principal of one of 
the Boston schools, asks, " How are these tests 
regarded ? All parties look forward to them 
with more or less anxiety, and many make 
strenuous efforts to prepare for them. The 
result is hurry, worr)^, rush, cram for weeks." 
Truly, this is a desirable state of things ! Is it 
not also the truth of the majority of our schools? 
Ask the teachers ; ask the parents ; ask the 
pupils ; don't ask " the committee man," — he 
knows nothing about it. 

Miss Mary E. Burt, of Chicago, thus analyzes 
the effect^ of *' marking " which is an hourly 
operation in most schools, and which necessarily 
accompanies the examination system : " Chil- 
dren have been marked to death, there is no 
doubt about that. The mark, like the old 
country school-master's whip, has hung over 



1 9^ " 'I'fi^ Young Idea." 

their heads until it has become the one thing of 
importance. The sign of an idea has come to 
take the place of the idea itself. It is pitiful, 
the way children are taught to look upon marks. 
The system has corrupted the minds and the 
conversation of children. *' What is my mark? " 
is the important question, not "What idea is 
there worth getting in my lesson ? " Listen to 
two children who have been reading Gray's 
Elegy. They say no more about the Elegy 
than they would say about a stick of wood if 
they had so exciting a topic for their lesson. 
The whole talk is about their 'mark.' " 

Oh, the tremendous importance of the little 
word ''pass"; the frightful significance of the 
"percent." upon which the passing is done ! Rain 
and dew and sunshine, the winds of the heavens, 
the stars in their courses, create and sustain 
"my percentage." In it is included spring, 
summer, autumn, and winter, all the signs of the 
zodiac, and the thirty-two points of the compass. 
It is " the Alpha and Omega, the first and the 
last, the beginning and the end." School is 
becoming to many of our young people exactly 
what was stated in a boy's composition : 

" Goin to school is to be marked every day 
and examined on paper when Teacher gits Time 
and then marked again and then promoted and 
then to graduate and git flowers if your a girl 
and go to college if your a boy. And I almost 
forgot the vacations which I and the rest of the 



** The Young Idea'' 197 

fellers like the best of all of it." Is this, then, 
what education has come to mean? Let thou- 
sards of teachers testify, if evidence is wanted 
and they can be induced to run the risk of giv- 
ing it. 

It is said that there is no loss without some 
small gain. Well for us and for our children 
if that be so. In the particular case under con- 
sideration, there is some profit with all the plague. 
The correct calculation of the credits upon these 
papers requires a vast amount of frantic figuring, 
thereby furnishing capital mathematical exercise, 
especially when the number of pupils in a divi- 
sion, the number of divisions in a class, the 
number of classes in the school, the number of 
lessons in a day, the number of days in a week, 
the number of weeks in a term, the number of 
terms in a year and the number of the examina- 
tion questions, are all added to the sum total, to 
be divided by another sum total, the inevitable 
fraction reduced to a decimal and carried out 
five places to e.xpire in a plus or minus, — most 
likely, the latter. And if the gain is so great to 
each individual, think of the benefit to the fav- 
ored teacher, privileged to repeat this profitable 
process as many times as she has pupils in her 
class and opportunities for examining them ! 

There is still another benefit accruing to the 
teacher, not shared by the pupils. " During the 
past five years," says Dr. Harlow, *'I have pre- 
served most of the examination papers which 



198 " The Young Idcar 

have been written for me. Whenever there is 
any danger of my becoming too hilarious, I can 
sober myself at once by opening the closet and 
gazing thoughtfully upon this literary skeleton, 
which has already assumed such vast propor- 
tions." Herein lies a valuable suggestion for 
teachers. To those who have in the same way 
preserved these " literary remains," how exhil- 
arating the prospect of the use to which they 
can be put ! And teachers are usually in need 
of sobering. Gay and giddy creatures, who have 
nothing to do but to sit in a big chair on a 
platform a few hours, on five days out of seven, 
to ''hear lessons," with long vacations and enor- 
mous salaries, — in some cases as high as seven 
dollars a week, — such creatures, like one of Mrs. 
Whitney's heroines, " can take a great amount 
of sobering." They need it ; they ought to pine 
for it. To those who have so far made no at- 
tempt to gather such a collection, — " a word to 
the wise is sufficient." It is not a difficult thing 
to do and there are frequent opportunities for 
doing it. Waste no time. Set about it at once. 
So shall the profession grow in sobriety, dignity, 
and worth, while development shall be given to 
brain and spirit, 

" From the toil 
Of dropping buckets into empty wells 
And growing old in drawing nothing up." 

But setting aside these incidental benefits to 
the teacher and the taught, what is the practical 



" The Young Idea J* 199 

outcome of the examination system when viewed 
in the most comprehensive way ? Stating the 
proposition in syllogistic form, — All examina- 
tions are good for schools ; all schools now 
have examinations ; therefore all schools are 
better than ever before, — can we draw a satis- 
factory conclusion ? Failing in this, must we not 
in some way modify our premises? What is the 
testimony of competent witnesses on this subject? 

The Superintendent of the Cincinnati schools 
gives his : '' For over thirty years pupils have 
been promoted in these schools almost exclu- 
sively on the results of written examinations. 
The influence has been evil and that continually. 
It has fostered and almost necessitated mechan- 
ical methods of teaching. The principal of the 
first grammar school in one of the largest cities 
of the country, once said in response to the 
inquiry why so much time was devoted to the 
memorizing of dates in history and rules in 
mensuration, ' My success as a teacher is mea- 
sured by the per cent, of correct answers my 
pupils give to the series of questions submitted 
by the examiner for promotion to the high school. 
I cannot stop to inquire whether my instruction 
is right or wrong. I must prepare my wares for 
the market.' " 

Col. Parker declares : '' The demand fixed by 
examiners is for cram and not for art, and as 
long as the demand exists so long will the teach- 
er's mind shrivel and dwarf in the everlasting 



200 ■-' The Young Idea'' 

tread-mill that has no beginning or end, and the 
more it turns the more it creaks." 

Answer, teachers, all over this broad universe 
where examination days are counted in the school 
calendar, — are these statements true of you and 
of your pupils ? If not, why do you not con- 
scientiously contradict them ? 

But while, as a Southern preacher remarked 
to his delinquent congregation, " My brutherin', 
these things hadn't orter so to be nohow," the 
profession finds that *' they air,'* and is at its 
wits' end to devise ways and means for gather- 
ing its lawful crops into the garner without let- 
ting the young reapers and binders stab them- 
selves to death with their sickles, or smother 
themselves and their teachers under the stacks 
of grain. 

The traveler, journeying on foot along the 
country, occasionally finds it necessary to take 
note from sun and shadow of his rate of pro- 
gress. The sea-captain daily measures his speed 
and determines his locality. The tradesman 
balances his books as regularly as the months 
come round, while no merchant fails to *' take 
account of stock " before beginning a new com- 
mercial year. Who wonders at these business 
transactions, or quarrels with the way in which 
they are conducted ? The teacher's equally 
legitimate measure of progress is the stock-tak- 
ing of the contents of his literary warehouses. 
Why should it prove to be such a season of 



" The Young Idear 201 

weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, for 
teachers and pupils alike ? 

An examination is for the purpose of finding 
out what a pupil knows, and a written examina- 
tion has the additional object of giving him prac- 
tice in the expression of his knowledge on paper. 
Are not both results legitimate and desirable ? 
The child is supposed to know something, and 
his teacher fondly hopes that the amount of his 
knowledge is in direct proportion to the labor 
expended upon him. But blessed is he Avho ex- 
pects nothing, for he can not be disappointed, 
and if he receives anything he is just so much 
ahead of his anticipations. 

To ask questions, — what is easier ? To ask 
too many, to ask too hard ones, to confuse, dis- 
courage, exasperate children, — what is easier? 
And, moreover, is there anything easier than to 
do all this from the best of motives and in utter 
ignorance of any wrong ? 

Froude asserts: *' The demands which intelli- 
gent people imagine that they can make on the 
minds of students is something amazing. I will 
give you a curious illustration of it. When the 
competitive examination system was first set on 
foot, a board of examiners met to draw up their 
papers of questions. The scale of requirement 
had first to be settled. Among them a highly 
distinguished man, who was to examine in 
English history, announced that, for himself, he 
meant to set a paper for which Macaulay might 



202 <' The Young Idea'' 

possibly get full marks, and he wished the other 
examiners to imitate him in the other subjects. 
I saw the paper which he set. I could myself 
have answered two questions out of a dozen. 
And it was gravely expected that ordinary young 
men of twenty-one, who were to be examined 
also in Greek and Latin, in moral philosophy, 
in ancient history, in mathematics, and in two 
modern languages, were to show a proficiency in 
each and all of these subjects which a man of 
mature age and extraordinary talents, like Mac- 
aulay, who had devoted his whole time to that 
special study, had attained only in one of them." 

The same principle, less in degree but pre- 
cisely the same in kind, obtains in our American 
grammar and high schools. Is it any wonder 
that the mere word ''Examination" cleaves like 
a two-edged sword the hearts of discouraged 
children and despairing teachers ? Can the 
force of folly farther go, than in these prepos- 
terous requirements ? 

The same author continues, " Under this sys- 
tem, teaching becomes cramming ; an enormous 
accumulation of propositions of all sorts and 
kinds is thrust down the students' throats, to be 
poured out again into examiners* laps." This 
process is defended by Prof. Jevons. He 
assumes that the struggle to swallow, to retain 
for a certain time, and to successfully cast out 
again this mass of information, is a test of the 
power of the student, proof of his ability to 



♦' The Young Idea." 203 

manage other equally difficult matters in the 
course of his business life. But is not a high 
mark in such examinations more an indication 
of the ability to recollect words than of the 
intellectual power resulting from thorough train- 
ing ? It is the philosopher Locke who tells us 
that '' the gift of memory is owing to a happy 
constitution, not to any habitual improvement 
got by exercise." That so many students do 
successfully pass these tests is owing more to 
their fortunate possession of this particular con- 
stitution than to anything else, and is no argu- 
ment for the waste of time and labor involved 
in putting pupils through these complicated 
mental maneuvers. 

But what of those pupils, sometimes the 
brightest ones in the class, whose wits seem 
driven into limbo by the mere sight of the 
examination paper ? Like King Duncan's tvvo 
chamberlains whose possets were drugged by 
Lady Macbeth, ''Memory, the warder of the 
brain, becomes a fume, and the receipt of 
reason a limbeck only." In too many cases, 
"their drenched natures lie as in a death." 

Little Tom, the chimney-sweeper, the^hero of 
Charles Kingsley's fascinating romance, " Water 
Babies," found himself in the course of^ his 
wanderings in the Island of Tomtoddies,— all 
heads and no bodies." Tom, as he approached 
it, heard grumbling and grunting and growling 
and wailing and weeping and whming, then 



204 '' The Young Idea." 

began to hear words — the Tomtoddies' song 
which they sing morning and evening and all 
night long, to their great idol Examination, — " I 
can't learn my lesson, the Examiner's coming ! " 
and that was the only song which they knew. 
Anxious to get some help from Tom, they 
asked him questions : *' What is the latitude and 
longitude of Snooksville in Norman's County, 
Oregon, United States ? " *' What was the name 
of Mutius Scaevola's thirteenth cousin's grand- 
mother's maid's cat ?" and another in despera- 
tion inquired, "Can you tell me the name of a 
place that nobody ever heard of, where nothing 
ever happened, in a country which has not been 
discovered yet ? " 

''And what good on earth will it do if I tell 
you ? " quoth Tom. 

Well, they didn't know. All they knew was, 
the Examiner was coming ! 

As regards practice in rhetorical expression, 
how much attention is paid to form or arrange- 
ment in the pupil's breathless plunges after facts 
lurking somewhere in the depths of his memory, 
to be drawn up with as little mutilation as possi- 
ble, and flung upon the paper as a gasping, 
wriggling fish is flung upon the bank of a stream ? 
If Lord Bacon knows what he is talking about 
when he says, "The art of well delivering the 
knowledge we possess is among the secrets left 
to be discovered by future generations," teachers, 
at least, are forced to admit that this present 



*' The Young Idear 205 

generation is not one of the specified "future" 
ones, judging from such forms of expression as, 

'' Uses of the fat in the body is to covered the 
bones depend upon age race weather climate 
and to covered the muscular and they are about 
one twentieth of the body is fat." 

" When the price of several articles we find 
by the same of articles we dividing by the 
artibles we have the factors of a number are the 
division." 

" Sir Philip Sidneys works were not much but 
he was so perfectly in his manners we feel in- 
clined to overlook his writings." 

" Examination questions," says Dr. Harlow, 
" are like the examiner. Some questions, if 
fully answered, would require whole volumes. 
A pupil who is poorly prepared is pleased when 
he sees them. He can conceal his ignorance by 
wandering at his own sweet will over a wide 
field of superficial requirements." 

" Thomas A Beckitt lived sort of princeley but 
when he was archbishop of canturberry he threw 
away all his splendid Clothes dident go to any 
more Balls and theatres and dressed just like a 
nun. He had more Religion than he used to 
have but he was not as good as he used to be 
but all through the Reign before all the clergy- 
men had groan very powerful they murdered 
thousands of People and if they were ministers 
the Folks thought everything they did was all 
right Henry said the judges should try them just 



2o6 " The Voting Idea'* 

as if they were other people Beckitt dident like 
this and had lots of Fights with the King and 
one day the King set up four nights to kill him and 
he conspired before the altar exclaimeing is there 
no one to rid me of this impertinunt Priest and 
when the King heard it he said he was conster- 
nation and he was martered and his tomb was 
observed once in 50 years People went there on 
foot on picnicks and they used to have jubilees." 

*' Pockahontus was a young Indian girl she 
pronounced the sentenc of deth upon her and 
she was the favorit daughter of a chief who was 
about only 12 she merried with the conscence 
of her farther mr rolf and she was made useful 
to keep the piece in the indains and colonoists 
and when she was twenty to she died and 
returned to America and left one son in the most 
respectable familyes in Virginia." 

" Bones is the framework of the body. If I had 
no bones in me I should not have so much shape 
as I have now. If I had no bones, my brain, 
heart, lungs, and larger blood vessels would be 
lying round in me, and might get hurt. If my 
bones were burned I should be brittle, because 
it would take the animal out of me. If I was 
soaked in acid I should be limber. I'd rather 
be soaked than burned. Some of my bones don't 
grow close to my others snug like the branches 
to the trunk of a tree. The reason why they 
don't grow that way is because they have joints. 
Joints is good things to have in bones. All my 



'' The Young Idea:' 207 

bones put together in their right place make a 
skeleton. If I leave out any or put any in the 
wrong place it aint no skeleton. Some animals 
have their skeletons on the outside. I am glad 
I aint them animals, for my skeleton, like it is 
on the chart, would not look very well on my 
outside." 

Why is it not as logical to examine in order to 
find whether a pupil should be allowed to con- 
tinue in a class, as to decide his fitness for pro- 
motion ? Could not an immense amount of time 
be saved in that way, to say nothing of avoiding 
discouragement on the part of both pupil and 
teacher ? In Omaha this plan has been found to 
work successfully. In some schools pupils con- 
ceded to be superior in every respect are ex- 
cused from the unnecessary formality of an ex- 
amination, — an immense saving of labor. Can 
any harm result from this method ? In some 
schools examinations have been entirely given 
up and the teacher's judgment is accepted as 
decisive regarding the standing of each pupil. 
This plan does not in all cases prove satisfactory. 
Of course, teachers should be infallible, possess- 
ing divine wisdom without a touch of human 
weakness. Perhaps such do exist in some of 
Bacon's " future generations," but at present we 
must be satisfied with mere human beings in all 
professions. A teacher may be partial to a few 
pupils, as a mother is often found to be, con- 
cerning one member of the family, though both 



2o8 *' The Young Idea:* 

mother and teacher are quick to resent any such 
implication, and generally seem unconscious of 
it. The deportment of a troublesome child 
may easily bias the judgment of a teacher ; 
his personal taste in the matter of studies may 
lead him to place a higher estimate upon the 
work done in some branches than in others. 
Much injustice may be done children by the best- 
intentioned teachers, and against injustice of any 
sort each child has a right to be protected as far 
as possible. 

But, as in the majority of cases the decision 
can be safely left with the instructor, it should 
be a comparatively easy matter to supplement 
his opinion or to test it in doubtful cases. Is it 
fair or logical that his daily and hourly experience 
with a class for months should be utterly ignored, 
and all decision made dependent upon the results 
of a few hours spent by the distressed and ter- 
rified pupils in the use of pen, ink, and paper ? 

The Superintendent of Schools, Allegheny, Pa., 
says : " The teacher who is clamorous for pupils 
to be promoted without examination, gives ample 
evidence, in my judgment, of poorly prepared 
classes." (What a compliment to teachers !) 
" No business ever prospers where the cashiers 
are allowed to audit their own accounts." As if 
cashiers ever did ''audit their own accounts "! 
This is a poor metaphor for an illustration of the 
case, but as the case itself is a poor one the fig- 
ure is in keeping. Still it is suggestive of one 



" The Young Idea'* 209 

of the weakest points in our educational system 
— that of looking upon pupils as so many- 
blank books, each one to be written through 
and filled up by educational scribes, with as 
much skill and despatch as possible, so many 
words to a page, so many pages to a chapter, 
and as many chapters as the course of study 
calls for. 

The late Henry F. Harrington of New Bedford, 
Mass., a man of eminent ability and unquestioned 
devotion to our schools, exclaims: " What a per- 
fect farce a test examination becomes, subject, as 
its transaction and results necessarily are to con- 
tingencies which negative its justice in the face of 
the positive knowledge which the teacher pos- 
sesses of the standing of every member of his 
school ! How perfectly the daily intercourse of 
the schoolroom enables the teacher to know 
thoroughly the inward character as well as the 
outward form of every one. If when an 
examination has been finished and its per 
cents, recorded,^ the teacher says, 'Such a 
pupil has succeeded who was not worthy to 
succeed,' or, ' Such a pupil has failed who 
ranks in merit above many who have won,' 
how his judgment, in the form of conscience, 
overthrows the decision of figures and ren- 
ders an insistence upon it an injustice and a 
shame ! " 

To say nothing of the ways and means by 
wh ch exaaiination results are obtained, what is 



2IO " The Young Idea.'' 

the practical value of them ? Theoretically they 
are to determine the pupil's fitness for pro- 
motion. Assuming that the mental measure is 
in every case correct, does it follow that the pu- 
pil is moved along accordingly ? O theory and 
practice, how difficult you find it to keep step ! 
The boy has a body as well as a brain, a fact 
usually overlooked until time for promotion. 
The body necessarily occupies just so many 
inches of space, so the body as well as the 
brain must be measured. Nor is this all. There 
are just so many rooms in the school building, 
just so many seats in each room ; forty seats 
can hardly be made to accommodate fifty pupils ; 
there are ten vacant seats in the room below. 
What a simplification of the whole matter to draw 
lots and keep back the extra ten pupils! But 
with fifty seats in the higher room and only forty 
pupils to fill them, ten more, regardless of per- 
centage, must be promoted from the lower room, 
provided there is that amount of surplus furni- 
ture. No elaborate calculation is necessary for 
this sort of transaction ; a little mental arith- 
metic is sufficient. " How easy is it then ! " 

Truly, " Promotion cometh not from the east, 
nor from the west, nor from the south," as sayeth 
the Psalmist. 

And what is the value of the '' exhibitions " 
and the " graduations "? In the words of 
one of these graduates, *' We can write and 
read our own compositions — essays. We have 



" The Young Idea:' 211 

a teacher to help us compose them, and an- 
other teacher to train us to deliver them. 
Those of us who have extra talent are to try 
for the valedictory. We are excused from our 
regular studies to read up for it. We've got 
piles of books, and the composition teacher has 
given us lots of references, and we're going to 
make heaps of notes of everything we can find 
on 'The Intrinsic Value of a Symmetrical Edu- 
cation,' and Eliza Jane Metonymy is writing 
just a lovely poem about Middle Aged Myths, 
and the rhyme is just perfect only in six or eight 
places, but Miss Literati will fix that up for her, 
and our class motto is Non Compus Mentis which 
means ' If you know a good deal a good deal is 
expected of you" or something like that, I'm not 
quite sure what it means and none of us have 
ever studied Latin, but it looks just too perfectly 
lovely for anything worked out in white carna- 
tions on a pink background." 

White dresses ? Certainly, that the effect may 
be pleasing to the eye, though the costume re- 
quires a carriage. Gloves? Of course, in order 
to be "consistent" and thereby add "a jewel" 
to other adornments. Flowers ? By all means. 
All girls receive flowers at graduation — big 
baskets and harps, and horseshoes, and the 
most popular girl is known by the size and 
number of the offerings. If, as occasionally 
happens, some " hand-to-mouth " family, those 
"poor, but respectable" persons so common 



212 '' The Young Idear 

in the community, cannot, — after paying the 
rent, buying shoes for little Johnnie, and put- 
ting sufficient food on the table, — have enough 
left over to pay for Mary Ann's dress and 
gloves and flowers and carriage — why, Mary 
Ann either stays at home to put little Johnnie 
to bed, or, in her best Sunday gown, slips in 
among the audience, gazing with a sort of " so 
near and yet so far" feeling at her more fortu- 
nate, though perhaps even less brilliant, class- 
mates. 

Why the public should be led to look forward 
to any such periodical and gratuitous entertain- 
ment, why pupils should claim it as an inaliena- 
ble right, why parents should be levied upon for 
the funds required for this display, nobody 
really seems to know. The public enjoys it, 
the pupils want it, the parents expect it. To be 
sure, it costs considerable in many ways, but 
then, unlike Christmas, graduation comes but 
once in a life-time. Do not mind any extra labor 
on the part of the teachers, — they would not 
dare to grumble even if they had the disposition ; 
do not consider the extra drain upon the strength 
of special pupils, — they are happy martyrs ; do 
not count the cost to the parents of any finan- 
cial sacrifice which they must make in order that 
Sarah Jane may appear as well as the rest of 
her class. The public — that great, vague, irre- 
sponsible, unthinking, but exacting public — finds 
it pleasant to sit and look and listen to the bloom- 



" The Young Idea:' 213 

ing young girls, who, in pretty clothes, among 
banks of flowers, read, recite, and sing for them 
The young girls enjoy the excitement : the bril- 
liance, the beauty of the occasion ; the rapt 
attention and pleased applause of the audience 
And as our genial Holmes says of similar condi- 
tions, '' I cannot, for the life of me find anything 
Satanic in all this. Tell me, only between our- 
selves, if some of these things are not desirable 
enough in their way?" But how about the 
educational way ? 

And what is exhibited by the "exhibition"? 
Do the five or ten chosen ones who have re- 
ceived an immense amount of extra intellectual 
and elocutionary drill, fairly represent the aver- 
age mental and oratorical ability of the class? 

Is it desirable that education shall develop 
the judgment, enabling it to distinguish between 
truth and falsehood, value and worthlessness, 
crudity and culture? Shall it give a sense of 
consistency as shown in the relation of income 
to outgo, the worth and use of time, amount and 
result of effort 1 Shall it foster economy not 
only of money, but of time, force, and feeling, 
often more valuable than dollars and cents ? 
Shall it, in short, inculcate an understanding of 
the general fitness of things ? It is the dictum 
of Matthew Arnold that ''the chief elements 
of education are sobriety and proportion." 
What amount of these two elements is cultivated 
in the ordinary school display? 



214 " The Youfig Idear 

In the public school, established on demo- 
cratic principles, each pupil is equally entitled 
to instruction, but on improved common- sense 
principles, let extra hours of labor be spent upon 
those who need it least. The best natural writ- 
ers shall be stimulated to literary effort, the best 
natural speakers be drilled in elocutionary prac- 
tice. Thus can be made a sensible and practi- 
cal application of the doctrine of the conser- 
vation of energy, and thereby shall the Script- 
ures be fulfilled, — To him that hath talent shall 
be given extra assistance in its development, 
while from him that hath not shall be taken 
away what little opportunity he is entitled to 
have. 

Are not the remedies for the evils of cram- 
ming, examinations, promotions, and exhibitions, 
the same as may reasonably be suggested for 
all the shortcomings of our schools, — less push 
and more progress ; less percentage and more 
profit ; less show and more substance ? 



THE END. 



/I 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




021 363 621 2 



